PORTLAND, Ore. — Shocking video from Federal Court in Portland. It showed two men looking for their illegal drug stash, holding the manager of a Public Warehouse at gunpoint in Southeast Portland.
It happened in December of 2017.
“So you tellin' me the police took my (bleep)?” says a gunman.
“I don’t know! That is what my boss said,” the manager replies on the video.
The video was captured by Jody Wafer as he held a gun on the warehouse manager.
Wafer and another man are trying to find their missing pot, nearly 500 pounds worth, that they'd left it in the warehouse.
But federal agents had figured out it was there, took it and made it look like a rip-off.
They wanted to find out who else was involved and figured Wafer would talk to everyone trying to find his pot. So they tracked him.
No matter how many times Wafer accused the manager of taking his stash-- he denied it.
After four minutes, Wafer told the man he was sending the video to someone else who would decide if the manager would live or die.
“Think! Cause when I send this video to the peoples it’s going to - if they don’t agree (with) you- pop goes the weasel,” he said in the recording.
The manager was not physically hurt. Police found him a couple hours after the incident and freed him.
The federal judge in the case, Robert E. Jones, sentenced Wafer to 7 years in prison.
Jones called out the federal drug agents for their stolen pot ruse that eventually involved an innocent bystander.
“That’s really disturbing to this court, this sneak and peek deception that law enforcement engaged in,’’ the Oregonian reported Jones saying at Wafer’s sentencing.
The judge said agents has been following Wafer and knew he would find his drugs missing.
“They knew you had a weapon and were going to go in there and find your drugs gone, taken,” Jones told the defendant as reported by the Oregonian. “They should have anticipated the conduct that could have cost (the storage manager) his life.’’
The incident was part of a much larger investigation. Federal investigators say Wafer, from Houston, Texas, ran a ring focused on growing marijuana in Portland and selling to it customers in Texas and Virginia.
Agents eventually seized 11,000 pot plants, 546 pounds of processed marijuana, more than $2.8 million in cash, 51 guns, 26 vehicles, a yacht and three houses.