Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #431

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Clean Trash Off
The Street, Get Free
Weed In Maine
Kristina Rex and WCSH , WCSH
GARDINER, Maine -- If you visit the city of Gardiner, you may notice a little less debris along the streets and side- walks.
That's because dozens of people spent a sunny Saturday collecting trash all over town.
The incentive? Free marijuana.
“Bring us back the full trash bag, and we give them a gift of cannabis,” said Dennis Meehan, owner of Summit Medical Marijuana in Gardiner.
He and his family are using their brand new business to clean up the community.
“[I heard of it in] Colorado - there was a town that did this,” said Meehan. “They had a great response to this. So I was hoping to do the same thing in Maine.”
How it works: grab a trash bag, fill it with trash from around town, return it to the store, and get your bag of mar- ijuana free of charge.
Meehan says he knows it’s not a great business model to give away free things, but says he’s helping people. “Something that caregivers do all across Maine that very few people know about is that they make huge sacrifices every week to help others live a better quality of life,” he said.
For Meehan and his family - this day of service isn't only about cleaning up the town, but edu- cating people about what he says is a life-changing sub- stance. “It's pro- found,” said Meehan. “The research. There's a whole world of sci- ence out there. If you started the research today, 10 years from now you'd still be doing the research...When you see this plant have an incredibly
life changing impact on somebody that has given up on life, or somebody that has been given up on by modern medi- cine - and you can bring them back to life and give them a quality of life. It doesn't just affect that patient, it affects every single person in the fami- ly.”
Meehan and his family hope to extend the day of service to the whole state soon.
Gardiner was one of the towns consider- ing a moratorium on the sale of recre- ational marijuana before the statewide moratorium was approved.
"Gifting" marijuana is currently legal.
Meehan made sure his customers were 21 years old before giving them their prize.
Teen Was Writing His Fraud
To-do List When The Cops
Came. He’d Stolen $1 Million
By David J. Neal
Topping a list of Things Cops Want to Find When Executing a Search Warrant at a Suspected Million Dollar Fraudster’s Home might be “the suspect writing his fraud to-do list.”
That’s what law enforcement found Phyllistone Termine doing at his North Miami-Dade home. That’s not the only reason Termine, 19, was sentenced last week to four and a half years in federal prison for aggravat- ed identity theft and access device fraud.
But it didn’t help.
The scam involved converting the mod- ern tax return scam to unemployment benefits — amass- ing names and Social Security
numbers and get- ting benefits in great waves of fraudulent filings, Termine admitted in court documents. Using more than 1,000 such names and numbers, the criminally enterpris- ing teenager falsely procured $1,019,859 in bene- fits from March 2015 through May 2016.
Unemployment benefits distributed by the state of Florida, but it’s fed- eral government money, which put the Department of Labor on the case. Termine made those filings from two Internet Provider addresses linked to his home in the 200 block of Northeast 111th Street.
When cops burst into Termine’s home with a search war-
rant on May 20, 2016, they found him in his bedroom, listening to music through his earbuds, writing what appeared to be a sum- mer to-do list on a legal pad.
The list included the tasks “Buy Online, Merrick BNK & CCVs” and “Buy 3 phones, 1 clean 2 dirty’s.”
The first phrase means buying Merrick Bank credit card numbers and the security code on the back from sites on the “dark web.”
Next to Termine on his bed: three cell phones and laptop. Hidden between the mattress and box spring: debit and credit cards that didn’t belong to Termine or anybody who lived with Termine. Also, there were blank white plastic cards with magnetic strips. Termine also had the necessary equipment to encode the magnet- ic strip on a credit or debit card.
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