An Oregon man has pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute marijuana for attempting to mail 143 pounds of pot hidden inside fake boulders across the country, according to the attorney general’s office in Oregon.
Curran Millican Manzer, 37, admitted in court Tuesday to mailing marijuana from Oregon, where production and the sale of the drug is legal, to Oklahoma. Mailing marijuana over state lines is against the law.
Court documents indicate police in Springfield, Ore., were contacted in September 2017 by UPS about packages bound for Oklahoma City that smelled like pot. The local police department opened an investigation into the matter, though it was not until November that they obtained a search warrant to track all packages going to or coming from Manzer.
In October 2017, the Springfield resident mailed “several” more packages to Oklahoma City via next-day air.
That same month, Manzer received an unspecified amount of money in the mail believed to be payments for the drugs.
Last November, a police officer witnessed Manzer carrying six “Curran’s Taxidermy” boxes into the local UPS store. They were all marked for next-day shipment to Oklahoma.
A canine unit was called in and flagged the packages as narcotics, which gave police reason to search the boxes. Officers found six large Styrofoam rocks that had 143 pounds of marijuana hidden inside them.
Manzer faces up to 20 years in prison, a $1 million fine, and three years of supervised release. His sentencing was set for Feb. 26.
Billy Williams, U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, said crimes like the one Manzer committed are not at all rare in the state because so much weed is being grown there.
“Illegal export continues to plague Oregon’s under regulated and insufficiently enforced state laws governing state-licensed marijuana. The extreme overproduction of marijuana in Oregon has prompted many individuals to seek out-of-state distribution opportunities to recoup the costs of both illegal and legal in-state production. Disrupting these interstate distribution channels remains a priority of our office,” Williams said in a statement.
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