The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have closed down an Internet operation that allegedly peddled marijuana seeds, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail.
The operation, known as Heaven’s Stairway, allegedly ran an Internet business out of a Montreal apartment and grew it into a multimillion-dollar concern, police say, that shipped high-potency seeds across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. At least until late January. The Mounties in Montreal said they had busted the enterprise and shut down its six Web sites. In a series of raids in late January, it arrested seven people and seized 200,000 marijuana seeds, along with bootie including $183,000 (U.S.) and three gold bricks.
"This was a major and large-scale operation," Staff Sgt. André Potvin, chief of operations for the Montreal drug section of the RCMP, said. "It was centralized, very organized, and active around the world."
Potvin said the Montreal mail-order operation had been active since 1998, but the police began their investigation in Nov. 2004. In all, seven investigators were assigned to the case for 16 months.
