Deadly Oklahoma weed shootings expose network tied – Business News
A string of lethal shootings related to Oklahoma marijuana farms — together with a quadruple execution and a home-invasion homicide — has uncovered a shadow network tied to New York money, organized crime and teams with hyperlinks to China, in response to a new report.
Authorities advised the New York Times that the operations had been fueled by out-of-state money, hid possession and lax marijuana legal guidelines — permitting felony teams to scale up illicit grows, exploit immigrant labor and divert huge quantities of weed into the black market.
The path led investigators removed from rural Oklahoma to New York City, the place real estate figures, political fundraisers and leaders of Chinese hometown associations allegedly bankrolled or backed the farms — teams that lawmakers say have ties to Beijing and have drawn scrutiny from federal authorities.
The image above reveals a hashish farm in Chickasha, Okla., in 2021. Denver Post through Getty Images
Oklahoma’s wide-open medical marijuana law, which positioned no limits on how a lot licensed growers may produce, created fertile ground for the scheme, investigators say, flooding the state with outsized grows that far outpaced native demand and fueled an unlawful interstate commerce.
One central determine was New York real estate developer John Lam, a main fundraiser for former Mayor Eric Adams. Lam constructed no less than 50 tasks within the metropolis and, in response to the Times, purchased a $1.5 million Oklahoma marijuana farm for his protégé Wyan Wang whereas later insisting he was merely an unpaid landlord with no function in day-to-day operations.
Wang was discovered shot useless in his Edmond, Okla., bed room in January 2025, mendacity face-down and nonetheless gripping a bloody kitchen knife investigators stated he used to attempt to fend off intruders during a focused home-invasion theft — one of a string of violent assaults tied to the cash-heavy marijuana commerce within the state.
Wang, 61, labored for Lam’s company recruiting buyers in China and ran a number of Chinese hometown associations in New York, together with the pro-Beijing Taishan Du Hu Association of America, information show — teams that backed Adams’ mayoral marketing campaign and publicly supported Chinese authorities insurance policies, together with the crackdown on Hong Kong’s civil liberties, the Times reported.
One of Wang’s Oklahoma operations was shut down in August 2022 after firefighters responding to black smoke discovered Chinese employees residing on-site in cramped quarters, cooking over an outside fire made of scrap wooden and construction particles — with no legitimate marijuana license or certificates of occupancy, officers stated.
John Lam, a New York real estate developer and political fundraiser, who in response to courtroom information purchased an Oklahoma marijuana farm later tied to an unlawful operation. Lam Group NYC
Former proprietor Chelsey Davis stated the Chinese laborers who took over the positioning labored across the clock, with some pressured to urinate in five-gallon fertilizer containers reasonably than step away from the processing line.
“You could go at midnight — they were working. You could go at 5 o’clock in the morning — they were working,” Davis was quoted as saying.
Firefighters additionally found the employees had been counting on geese and turtles caught from a close by city-owned lake for food, housing the animals in makeshift pens constructed from street netting and discarded marijuana trays, earlier than officers ordered the operation shut down on the spot.
City information obtained by the Times show that weeks after the shutdown, an utility to reopen the farm surfaced bearing Lam’s title. But planners swiftly rejected it for failing to secure a marijuana license and meet primary security requirements — a transfer Lam later stated he had not personally licensed.
A string of lethal shootings related to Oklahoma marijuana farms has uncovered a shadow network tied to New York money, organized crime and teams with hyperlinks to China. Denver Post through Getty Images
Even after Wang’s operation was shuttered, information show he continued working within the marijuana business, as Oklahoma authorities opened broader investigations into farms linked to New York–primarily based hometown affiliation leaders amid issues about hidden possession, labor exploitation and unlawful diversion of hashish out of state.
The scrutiny has since expanded to different New York–primarily based hometown affiliation leaders, with the Times figuring out almost a dozen people tied to these teams who invested in or had connections to Oklahoma marijuana farms — many of them now below investigation as authorities probe hid possession, labor abuses and potential interstate trafficking.
In November 2022, 4 people had been executed at an unlicensed Oklahoma marijuana farm close to Hennessey in Kingfisher County, authorities stated, after a Chinese citizen and former employee, Wu Chen, allegedly opened fire in a dispute over a $300,000 investment he demanded back.
The grisly killings have been cited by prosecutors and investigators as a grim marker of the violence swirling across the state’s illicit grow operations.
