REAL-LIFE 'WEEDS'

Now, I know that I'm not the only one who watches the Showtime hit series Weeds, which is about a single mom who makes ends meet by selling....well...weed! It seems there's a real-life version of the TV show up in Scarsdale, NY. It turns out; a divorced mom of two was busted for allegedly running a multimillion dollar pot growing operation from a Queens’ warehouse. 45-year-old Andrea Sanderlin was put in a Brooklyn lockup on Tuesday and is facing up to 10 years in prison for running what the feds describe as a "sophisticated operation to grow and process marijuana." Yeah....so? Unfortunately for Sanderlin, unlike the fictional pot princess on Weeds played by Mary-Louise Parker, she will need more than a script writer to get her out of this jam.

According to her lawyer, Joel Winograd, Sanderlin is a full-time mom with no criminal record. She pleaded not guilty to a federal charge of conspiring to manufacture and distribute 1000 or more pot plants. Winograd, whose past clientele includes Gambino mob soldier Michael "Roc" Roccaforte and shoe-designer-turned-scammer Steve Madden, is now trying to get Sanderlin out on bail. Sanderlin's arrest came as a shock to people who knew her as a doting mother of two girls, ages 3 and 13, who tooled around Scarsdale in a Mercedes SUV and lived in a spacious five-bedroom house.

 At Sanderlin's Spanish-style home, stunned neighbors said that the only red flag they noticed was the father of the younger daughter. One neighbor said, "It was obvious that he wasn't a dad who put on a shirt and tie and took the 7:04 to the city." Her former father-in-law, James Sanderlin got a nice chuckle when he heard the news of Sanderlin's arrest saying, "Isn't that something? She and my son married young and have been divorced for umpteen years. They had a son and my son raised him." When he was asked what his former daughter-in-law was like, he responded with "I'd rather not say." 

Sanderlin's secret life began showing its ugly head back in April when Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested five men who had been growing marijuana in two New York City warehouses. Their alleged leader was 50-year-old Stephen Haberstroh, a longtime friend of Sanderlin's. One of the five arrested decided to save his own skin and spilled about a woman he only knew as "Andi" and that she has her own pot plantation somewhere in New York City. Investigators began tailing Sanderlin and discovered she ran a business called Fantastic Enterprises from a warehouse in Maspeth, Queens. They discovered that it was using an "unusually high amount of electricity", which is kind of tell-tale sign of an indoor pot-growing operation. That would've been the first thing out of my mouth. Sanderlin also made it a point to pay all of her bills in cash. One neighbor who lived across the street from the hydroponic warehouse said he would often smell the marijuana aroma emitting from the warehouse. I bet it smelled good! Just saying....

On May 20, the FBI confronted Sanderlin at the Warehouse and discovered a pot growing operation complete with state-of-the-art lighting, irrigation and ventilation systems. They also seized around 2,800 plants and large quantities of dried marijuana. At Sanderlin's home, they found $6000 in cash and books on money laundering and growing marijuana. Yup, sounds like she's not guilty! I mean hey, the woman is a single mother of two. She needed an income and found a way to make a lot of money really fast. Isn't that the American way? Marijuana is going to be legalized all over the U.S. soon! We're already two states in. What happens then? You lock up a woman for ten years for doing something that is legal? I guess the only thing that I have to say here is that I wish I found out about her before they caught her because I have a lot of "friends" (wink wink nudge nudge) who partake and could have made her even more money!