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CAL AMSTERDAM – Political consultant Melahat Rafiei pleads guilty to attempted wire fraud – Retail License “Cannabis Fixer” says she Agreed to Bribe Irvine Politicians FBI Looking for Others

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A former executive director of the Democratic Party of Orange County pleaded guilty today to a felony charge for attempting to defraud one of her political consultancy firm’s clients.

Melahat Rafiei, 45, of Anaheim, entered her plea to attempted wire fraud in Los Angeles federal court. Sentencing was set for Oct. 13, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“Ms. Rafiei appeared in court today and per her plea agreement entered her plea before the judge. She is proud that the work she has done was instrumental in bringing down the Anaheim cabal,” said Alaleh Kamran, Rafiei’s attorney. “It is worth noting that her plea was not to bribery charges, but to attempted wire fraud.”

Rafiei, the principal and founder of Progressive Solutions Consulting, a Long Beach-based political consulting firm, admitted that she agreed to bribe two members of the Irvine City Council — both on cannabis-related matters, court papers show.

The two councilmembers were not named in the plea agreement, nor were any allegations against any councilmembers documented in the agreement. No current councilmembers were serving at that time.

Rafiei was a longtime leader in Orange County’s Democratic Party and formerly served as secretary of the California Democratic Party and state representative to the Democratic National Committee.

According to her plea agreement, from April to June 2018, Rafiei agreed to give at least $225,000 in bribes to Irvine City Council members in exchange for their introducing a city ordinance that would allow Rafiei’s clients to open a retail cannabis store in Irvine.

In April 2018, Rafiei presented a business opportunity to an individual who was then employed in the medical cannabis industry and offered to introduce the person to an Irvine politician, who was not identified in court papers, prosecutors said.

The next month, Rafiei met with the unnamed elected official to discuss introducing an ordinance in Irvine that would legalize retail medical cannabis and ultimately benefit the individual’s business, court papers state.

Following the meeting, Rafiei asked the person’s business partner to pay her between $350,000 and $400,000 in exchange for getting the cannabis ordinance introduced, according to her plea agreement.

Irvine only allows marijuana testing laboratories in industrial, medical and science districts. No other type of commercial cannabis business is permitted.

In September and October of 2019, Rafiei falsely represented to a commercial cannabis company owner that, in exchange for a payment of at least $300,000, she would work to pass a cannabis-related ordinance in Anaheim that would benefit and be specifically tailored for the company owner’s business, her plea agreement says.

However, Rafiei already had been working on such an ordinance for other paying clients, court papers show.

Rafiei then falsely represented to the victim that she would keep only $10,000 of the payment in exchange for her purported work. In fact, Rafiei intended to keep $100,000 of the payment, prosecutors said.

Rafiei faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison, prosecutors noted.

Political consultant Melahat Rafiei pleads guilty to attempted wire fraud

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CAL AMSTERDAM – Brown Paper Bags Full of Cash – New details show sprawling web of corruption in Southern California cannabis licensing

BY ADAM ELMAHREK, RUBEN VIVES, ROBERT J. LOPEZ, PAIGE ST. JOHN

OCT. 15, 2022

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As a California lawmaker called for a statewide task force to crack down on corruption in the legal cannabis market, new details are emerging in a bribery scandal that has ensnared local government officials from the Inland Empire to the San Gabriel Valley and southeast Los Angeles County.

Federal prosecutors have unveiled two plea agreements that detail pay-to-play schemes involving cannabis business licensing and corroborate allegations in a Times investigation last month that examined how legalization of weed unleashed a wave of corruption across California.

In one of the agreements, former Baldwin Park City Councilmember Ricardo Pacheco admitted soliciting bribes from weed businesses — including $150,000 from a consultant working for a local cannabis distributor. The consultant declined, but at the direction of the FBI delivered campaign contributions requested by Pacheco, the agreement said. The agreement doesn’t name the distributor, but its description of the dates the firm was awarded the exclusive right to distribute cannabis matches only one company, Rukli Inc.

In the other plea agreement, a former San Bernardino County planning commissioner, Gabriel Chavez, admitted acting as an intermediary to funnel bribes from pot businesses to Pacheco as part of the scheme.

Assemblymember Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) asked state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta in writing Thursday to create a task force to examine corruption in local cannabis licensing and ensure that cities are awarding permits without favoritism. She cited The Times investigation, along with recent corruption prosecutions.

“My hope is that this task force will investigate and prosecute any illegal activity tied to awarding cannabis licenses,” Garcia wrote in her letter to Bonta. “I also hope that your office is able to create a road map for future cities to ensure pay-to-play schemes and any illegal activity associated with cannabis licensing ends.”

Also in response to The Times investigation, Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) said he planned to request a state audit on cannabis licensing.

Other state officials have responded to The Times’ recent investigation of legal weed, particularly the newspaper’s findings that legalization triggered a surge in outlaw cannabis grows. The grows have engulfed entire communities and resulted in environmental damage, increased violence and exploitation of workers, including some who have died from carbon monoxide poisoning from generators while trying to keep warm.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office this summer directed his emergency operations, cannabis licensing, water regulation and environmental protection agencies to form a task force targeting illegal cannabis farms.

The task force also includes the state’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, renamed by Bonta as EPIC, short for the Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis. In the past, CAMP leaned heavily on National Guard troops and helicopters each summer to cut down illegally grown plants on public land. In a webcast news conference this week, Bonta said EPIC would now be year-round and also take on organized crime as well as labor trafficking.

Law enforcement officers within the new state program and in counties grappling with rampant unlicensed cannabis farms voiced skepticism. They noted the task force involves agencies already working together, and no new resources are being provided to already short-staffed field teams, with the exception of a call for volunteers from within the Department of Justice to increase the cannabis program from one employee to five.

“I feel as if the state came to our county, doused it with gasoline, set fire to it, then began praising themselves for offering us a garden hose to deal with what they had created,” Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall said.

The Times identified more than a dozen government officials statewide who received income — ranging from thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands — from cannabis companies or had interests in weed businesses while still in office.

In some instances, local government officials took on dual roles as lobbyists or consultants for pot interests. The vast majority of cities have no lobbyist or consultant registry that would track this activity.

The payments are legal as long as officials disclose them and don’t cast votes that would financially benefit the firms paying them.

But the accusations in the two plea agreements involving Pacheco and Chavez in Southern California go further, alleging a scheme in which public officials used their offices to do favors for cannabis businesses and other public officials in return for bribes.

One such arrangement involved a former Huntington Park city manager, who doubled as a pot business consultant and was representing a weed company seeking a permit in Baldwin Park, the plea agreement for Chavez alleges. The city manager signed a $14,500 city contract for Chavez’s internet marketing company while Chavez was acting as an intermediary for bribes, passing along cash to Pacheco, according to the documents.

The no-bid contract “represented, in part, further compensation for Chavez in his efforts facilitating the bribe to Pacheco to secure the marijuana permit,” a Department of Justice news release said.

The documents don’t name the former Huntington Park city manager but say he is currently the city manager of Commerce and served on the board of the Montebello Unified School District. That person is Edgar Cisneros.

Cisneros’ office referred The Times to Commerce City Atty. Noel Tapia, who said that the City Council was aware of the allegations and monitoring the situation. He also noted that Cisneros has not been charged in the investigation.

FBI agents previously conducted several raids on local government officials, including the office of Baldwin Park’s city attorney, Robert Tafoya, and the home of former Compton City Councilmember Isaac Galvan.

The plea agreements announced last week allege Tafoya, identified as Person 1, advised Pacheco how to set up the bribery scheme, including the use of a middle man to funnel bribes. The agreements identify Person 1 as the Baldwin Park city attorney.

On Wednesday evening the Baldwin Park City Council voted unanimously to accept Tafoya’s resignation as city attorney.

His lawyer, Mark Werksman, said Thursday that Tafoya’s “actions as city attorney at all times were lawful and ethical,” and he accused Pacheco and Chavez of “flinging accusations against innocent people to save their own skin.”

Garcia said she hopes an attorney general task force would root out corruption as well as identify how cities can better oversee pot licensing to prevent conflicts of interest, and asked that the task force first focus on southeast Los Angeles County.

“Abusing public funds and corrupting our local democratic processes for personal gain is detrimental to governance,” Garcia said. “While I’m a supporter of legal cannabis, I want to make sure it’s done in a way that’s fair and doesn’t corrode the public’s trust in our system.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-15/southern-california-weed-licensing-corruption

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-08/a-series-on-the-fallout-of-legal-weed-in-california

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-15/cannabis-corruption-threats-secret-financial-deals-politicians

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-08/reality-of-legal-weed-in-california-illegal-grows-deaths

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CAL AMSTERDAM – Weed users nearly 25% more likely to need emergency care and hospitalization “Our study demonstrates that the use of this substance is associated with serious negative outcomes, specifically, ED emergency department visits and hospitalizations” 1-800-662-HELP

(CNN) Using recreational marijuana is associated with a higher risk of emergency room care and being hospitalized for any reason, a new study has found.

“Cannabis use is not as benign and safe as some might think,” said study author Nicholas Vozoris, assistant professor and clinician investigator in the division of respirology at the department of medicine at the University of Toronto.

“Our study demonstrates that the use of this substance is associated with serious negative outcomes, specifically, ED (emergency department) visits and hospitalizations,” Vozoris said in an email.

Significant risk of hospitalization.

The study, published Monday in the journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research, looked at national health records data for over 30,000 Ontario, Canada, residents between the ages of 12 and 65 over a six-year period.

When compared with people who did not use marijuana, cannabis users were 22% more likely to visit an emergency department or be hospitalized, the study revealed.

Respiratory problems from smoking weed was the second leading reason users seek emergency care, the study found.

The finding held true even after adjusting the analysis for over 30 other confounding factors, including other illicit drug use, alcohol use and tobacco smoking.

“Physical bodily injury was the leading cause of emergency department visits and hospitalizations among the cannabis users, with respiratory reasons coming in a close second,” Vozoris said.

Marijuana smokers had higher blood and urine levels of several smoke-related toxins such as naphthalene, acrylamide and acrylonitrile than nonsmokers, a 2021 study found. Naphthalene is associated with anemia, liver and neurological damage, while acrylamide and acrylonitrile have been associated with cancer and other health issues.

Another study done last year found teenagers were about twice as likely to report “wheezing or whistling” in the chest after vaping marijuana than after smoking cigarettes or using e-cigarettes.

Growing body of research.

A number of studies have shown an association between marijuana use and injury, both physical and mental.

Marijuana may make sleep worse, especially for regular users, study finds

Heavy use of marijuana by teens and young adults with mood disorders — such as depression and bipolar disorder — has been linked to an increased risk of self-harm, suicide attempts and death, according to a 2021 study.

Another 2021 study found habitual users of cannabis, including teenagers, are increasingly showing up in emergency rooms complaining of severe intestinal distress that’s known as “cannabis hyperemesis syndrome,” or CHS.

The condition causes nausea, severe abdominal pain and prolonged vomiting “which can go on for hours,” Dr. Sam Wang, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist and toxicologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, told CNN in a prior interview.

A review published earlier this year looked at studies on over 43,000 people and found a negative impact of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the main psychoactive compound in cannabis, on the brain’s higher levels of thinking.

For youth, this impact may “consequently lead to reduced educational attainment, and, in adults, to poor work performance and dangerous driving. These consequences may be worse in regular and heavy users,” coauthor Dr. Alexandre Dumais, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal told CNN in a prior interview.

At a time when “health care systems are already stretched thin around the world following the Covid pandemic and with difficult economic times … cannabis use is on the rise around the world,” Vozoris said.

“Our study results should set off ‘alarm bells’ in the minds of the public, health care professionals, and political leaders,” he said in his email.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/health/marijuana-emergencies-hospitalization-study-wellness/index.html

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