July hearings are scheduled for five former Santa Barbara County cannabis operators criminally charged with perjury, unlawful cultivation and sale of marijuana, and conspiracy to commit a crime.
The two cases — filed against people associated with Herbal Angels and Santa Barbara Greenland Deliveries, or SBGD — are among dozens of criminal complaints that District Attorney Joyce Dudley’s office has filed against cannabis operators since the Board of Supervisors opened the floodgates to the industry in 2018, transforming Santa Barbara County into a pot capital of California. Typically, these cases have been settled in the pre-trial stage.
In court, lawyers for the Herbal Angels and SBGD defendants are likely to attack the county ordinance itself, as well as state and federal marijuana laws, pointing to their complexities, loopholes and contradictions.
“There’s so much gray area in the whole process,” said Josh Webb, an attorney for Arthur Olowski, one of three defendants in the SBGD case. “It’s been the Wild West.”
Similarly, Bill Makler, an attorney for Ingrid McCann, another SBGD defendant, said, “Ms. McCann is caught up in a cauldron of unsettled and confusing laws that have come about since legalization of marijuana began, and she looks forward to presenting her defenses at trial.”
In the Herbal Angels case, Eli Sheiman and Mariette Wingard of Santa Barbara, co-owners and operators of an allegedly illegal cannabis grow at 2761 Cebada Canyon Road west of Buellton, are scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on Wednesday before Judge Thomas Adams. The judge will decide whether there is enough evidence for them to stand trial for the charges.
Sheiman is charged with two felony counts of alleged perjury and falsification of public records. Both he and Wingard face two misdemeanor counts for allegedly growing more than six cannabis plants illegally and possessing marijuana for sale. The couple have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The charges against Herbal Angels stem from a December 2019 raid by the Sheriff’s Cannabis Compliance Team on the property, when 3,000 pounds of dried and frozen cannabis products were purportedly destroyed.
In the Santa Barbara Greenland Deliveries case, William “Bubba” Hines, a Louisiana oilman with vineyards west of Buellton and a home in Montecito, and Olowski and McCann of Santa Barbara, are scheduled for a preliminary hearing before Judge Brian Hill on July 13.
Their case centers on an allegedly unlicensed cannabis operation that Hines and Olowski ran at Hines’s vineyard property at 705 Mail Road, off Highway 246, and the alleged illegal sale of marijuana and psilocybin “magic” mushrooms out of Olowski and McCann’s home at 64 Ridge Road in Montecito and their business office at 120 Juana Maria St. in Santa Barbara.
The trio face multiple felony counts — two for Hines, two for McCann and four for Olowski — and are accused of conspiracy to commit crimes regarding the alleged illegal cultivation, sale or transportation of marijuana, and the alleged sale of a controlled substance for the psilocybin mushrooms.
In addition, the SBGL operators face multiple misdemeanor allegations for cultivation, possession or transportation of marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms for sale — one count for Hines, five for Olowski and seven for McCann. They have pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The Herbal Angels Case
The case against Herbal Angels was filed in March 2020, but court proceedings were postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The criminal complaint alleges that Sheiman lied on a county affidavit and claimed to have been growing medical marijuana at Herbal Angels before Jan. 19, 2016. The county allowed self-identified medical marijuana growers to continue operating after that date under “legal, non-conforming” status, so long as they applied for county zoning permits. Without an affidavit, they could not qualify for a state business license.
Court records show that Sheiman’s lawyers, Mark Hardiman of Los Angeles and Rebecca Mendribil, are contending that he and Wingard are “immune from prosecution” because at the time of the raid, Herbal Angels had “12 valid California state licenses to cultivate cannabis and sell marijuana in Lompoc.”
The lawyers note that Sheiman had a pending application with the county for a zoning permit, and that the county still has no process in place that can adjudicate — that is, make a formal judgment — about growers’ claims of legal non-conforming status.
Sheiman’s attorneys further claim that since affidavits are not administered under oath, the county cannot allege that he acted “willfully” or that he “delivered the allegedly false declaration to someone else, intending that it be uttered or published as true.”
The District Attorney’s Office alleges that Sheiman used a fraudulent affidavit to get his state licenses and that he “had to have known” that marijuana was not being continuously grown on the property from Jan. 19, 2016, to the start of Herbal Angels’ lease.
Invoices found at Herbal Angels during law enforcement searches revealed that the business, a 4-acre hoop-house grow off Highway 246, sold more than $1 million in cannabis between July 2017 — when Sheiman signed the lease — and the raid in December 2019, court records show.
On Dec. 16, 2019, several days before the raid, law enforcement officers reportedly found $170,000 in one of Sheiman’s briefcases in one of the couple’s vehicles, and more at their home.
In February 2020, the District Attorney’s Office filed a separate case in Superior Court seeking the forfeiture of $202,873 in cash that the sheriff’s team allegedly seized from Sheiman and Wingard, including the cash in their bank accounts at Union and Wells Fargo banks, records show. The forfeiture case is on hold, pending completion of the criminal case.
Among dozens of cannabis cultivation permit applications reviewed by the county to date, only a handful have been rejected. But in May 2020, the county Planning Commission unanimously turned down Sheiman’s permit application for 16 acres of cannabis in hoop houses, six greenhouses and two large two-story processing buildings at 2761 Cebada Canyon Road.
The commissioners said they could not support a “major industrial project” next to a rural neighborhood of 110 people living on ranchettes, all sharing the same narrow, winding road off Highway 246. Neighbors had complained of bright night lights, mysterious nighttime truck traffic, noisy generators and the “skunky” smell of cannabis from Herbal Angels in their bucolic canyon.
The SBGL Case
On Aug. 31, 2016, county records show, William “Bubba” Hines, president of Ridgelake Energy Inc., an oil and gas drilling firm in Metairie, Louisiana, purchased a 99-acre property with 30 acres planted in wine grapes at 705 Mail Road. The price was $1.6 million.
Hines constructed a greenhouse and an industrial building on the property, and in April 2019, county records show, he and Olowski applied for a zoning permit for the cultivation of 3.5 acres of outdoor cannabis, two cannabis greenhouses, 5,800 square feet of indoor cultivation, and the conversion of two residences and a storage barn for cannabis processing.
Hines also owns a 70-acre vineyard property at 1052 Drum Canyon Road, which he purchased in 2017 for $1.7 million, records show. It’s just across Highway 246 from Mail Road. In 2012, he bought a $7 million home on Knapp Drive in Montecito.
Hines first surfaced in local cannabis news in early February 2019, when the Santa Barbara Independent reported that he was escorted by sheriff’s bailiffs out of a heated county Board of Supervisors hearing. A large, rambunctious crowd of cannabis critics from Tepusquet Canyon to Carpinteria was angry about the smell of pot in their neighborhoods.
According to the Independent, Hines became “especially incensed” at John De Friel, a prominent cannabis grower, who spoke in favor of the industry. Hines said the smell from De Friel’s operations, which are not located near his properties, would adversely affect his vineyards and a tasting room he planned to build.
The case against Hines and Olowski, the purported operators of Santa Barbara Greenland Deliveries, and McCann, who allegedly made the deliveries, was filed by the district attorney in April of this year, based largely on text messages between Hines and Olowski in 2021, as well as several deliveries of cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms allegedly made by McCann to an undercover sheriff’s detective in September and October last year.
According to court documents, Hines and Olowski allegedly operated an unlicensed cannabis grow at 705 Mail Road from January to mid-October 2021, and allegedly conspired to illegally transport and sell marijuana.
Olowski was reputedly in charge of cultivation and business operations; he would pick up cannabis in Lompoc and take it to 64 Ridge Road for processing and packaging. McCann reputedly assisted with trimming and processing and delivered cannabis to customers of SBGL. Olowski and McCann also allegedly set up and maintained a website to advertise cannabis for sale.
Authorities also allege that Olowski ordered psilocybin mushrooms and had them sent to 64 Ridge View Road to sell to customers of SBGL and that McCann made three deliveries to undercover sheriff’s detectives who purchased cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms on the SBGL website.
Webb, Olowski’s lawyer, said this week that he was “a young, hardworking guy who has tried to do everything the right way.” He and Hines “applied for all of the proper licensing for the grow” and Olowski “paid taxes on his sales of cannabis,” Webb said. Compared to other cannabis operations in the county, he said, SBGL was small, yet “it was a very large monetary investment that he (Olowski) and Bubba had put into the project, lots of sweat equity.”
Robert Landheer, Hines’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
In July 2021, even as the Sheriff’s Office was investigating SBGL, Hines’s and Olowski’s zoning permit application was approved by the county Planning & Development director. Hines’ neighbors, Kathi and Bill Hames, promptly appealed to the county Planning Commission to deny the permit.
The county Planning Commission denied the appeal and approved the permit for the Mail Road property, noting that the operators planned to install carbon filters to reduce the cannabis smell at the indoor cultivation building and greenhouses.
The commissioners called SBGL one of the “most benign” cannabis projects they had reviewed. The neighbors’ arguments, one commissioner said, were “disingenuous” and “completely without merit.”
“It was disheartening for us,” Kathi Hames said. “It’s a huge statement as to what’s wrong with this county and cannabis.”
Under county ordinances, a business license can be denied to a cannabis operator who is convicted of a felony. Should that happen to SBGL, it would not affect the zoning permit, which is issued for a property; another operator could use the permit to grow cannabis at 705 Mail Road.
— Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. As a community service, she offers her report to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free.