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 vinsue
GRAND OLD FART
 
Registered: 02/07/09
Posts: 470
Loc: The Garden State(NJ) 
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 Owner of Brooklyn Maraschino Cherry Co kills himself after police find huge marijuana grow op.. 
#770120 - 02/25/15 06:10 AM (11 years, 2 months ago) |
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http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/cherry-company-owner-kills-drug-operation-found-article-1.2127732
A cherry manufacturing king committed suicide in a Brooklyn factory after his business was exposed Tuesday as a “Breaking Bad”-style drug den, sources said.
“Take care of my kids!” Arthur Mondella, 57, screamed to his sister after locking himself in a bathroom at the Dell’s Maraschino Cherries company.
The sound of a gunshot then echoed through the factory, home to the family-owned business since its 1939 opening. Joanne Capece stood outside helplessly as her brother pulled the trigger.
Investigators were searching for documents and questioning Mondella for about five hours when they came upon a flimsy-looking shelving system. Sent to the Red Hook business about 8 a.m. to uncover alleged pollution in the waters near the cherry plant, investigators were hit by a faint smell of weed.
A detective assigned to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office noticed the shelves attached to the wall by magnets. Authorities started asking Mondella about the partition and he excused himself. He walked into the bathroom attached to his office.
A source who knew Mondella told the Daily News that the cherry king had a license to carry a gun and often kept it holstered to his ankle.
After Mondella shot himself in the head, investigators were shocked to discover three bags holding about 80 pounds of pot and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash stashed in the factory, sources said.
Later, after executing a search warrant on the secret entrance, investigators uncovered “a huge marijuana-growing operation” underneath the warehouse, a source said.
the space below the plant, they also found numerous high-end vehicles, including a Rolls-Royce, a Porsche and Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
... The initial raid was conducted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the city Department of Environmental Protection and detective investigators from the Brooklyn DA’s office. The authorities who arrived at the Red Hook facility with four warrants weren’t looking for drugs, officials said.
They were instead trying to nail Mondella, a third-generation owner of the business, for dumping syrup and other cherry-related waste into the water near the warehouse, sources said.
About 25 investigators descended on the Dikeman St. facility, home to a $5 million renovation just last year. Investigators fanned out across four buildings at the plant as the probe began.
One of the detectives spotted the shelves inside a gated area of the factory, and thought the wall “appeared to hide a secret room,” a source told The News. The investigators spied a ladder leading to a basement where the bags of weed were spotted, the source said.
The cherry factory — with big-name clients like Caesars Entertainment, Red Lobster, Buffalo Wild Wings and Chick-fil-A — was long targeted by the city Department of Environmental Protection.
There was enough sticky discharge to turn some local bees red, raising flags of the same color.
“It probably would have been a fine,” one source said of the spillage. “Nobody does 10 years in prison for dumping cherry syrup in the water.”
Sad, really...:cherryking:  . . . 
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" One toke over the line... "
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 geokills
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Registered: 05/08/01
Posts: 1,287
Loc: city of angels
Last seen: 2 years, 8 months
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 Re: Owner of Brooklyn Maraschino Cherry Co kills himself after police find huge marijuana grow op.. [Re: vinsue]
#770163 - 02/25/15 01:58 PM (11 years, 2 months ago) |
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Wow, that's pretty wild.
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Do Your Part!
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Sham87
マリオ
Registered: 03/20/12
Posts: 7,626
Last seen: 13 days, 22 hours
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 Re: Owner of Brooklyn Maraschino Cherry Co kills himself after police find huge marijuana grow op.. [Re: geokills]
#770166 - 02/25/15 02:31 PM (11 years, 2 months ago) |
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So this could have been avoided by properly discarding the waste his plant produced? 
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...once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right...
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