PORTLAND, Oregon — A cannabis company says their Portland-based warehouse and distribution center was the target of a $1 million marijuana heist.
The Shadow Box Farms was burglarized during the last weekend of October, its president, Tim Winner, said.
“They did a two-day operation,” Winner said. “They cut through the bars, dropped a ladder and went to town.”
According to Winner, the southeast Portland office that was broken into processes and packages products sourced from their grow operation in southern Oregon.
The thieves got inside the building through a skylight and cut through steel bars below, Winner said.
“They knew what they were doing,” Winner said. “They were pros.”
Surveillance video of the break-in, which Winner shared with FOX 12, appears to show one thief climbing down a ladder before stacking up multiple boxes and disabling a surveillance camera. The thief’s eyes can be seen looking right into the lens before the video goes dark.
However, other nearby surveillance cameras continued to record, later showing at least two thieves pass products up a ladder to the roof.
The suspects, Winner said, took an entire cooler that was full of cannabis oil jars. A single jar is valued at nearly $3,000.
“It’s so valuable because of the amount of product it takes to make it,” Winner said.
In addition, dozens of 10-pound bags of bud, about 423 pounds in total, were stolen, Winner said. A single bag is worth about $10,000.
In total, Winner estimated the company’s loss at $1 million. He said the products stolen had just been processed as part of their first 2019 Harvest, known in the cannabis industry as “Croptober”.
“We had it all pre-sold, so that was bad,” Winner said.
The president of the cannabis company thinks the stolen products were sold on the black market.
“I’m sure that it’s been taken over to the East Coast and probably, I’m sure, they’ve liquidated it,” Winner said.
In addition to their financial loss, Winner said the theft has taken a toll on his staff’s morale.
“The money we’ll recover from and we’ll do okay, but the security – and the sense of security – I don’t know we’ll ever get that back,” Winner said.
Winner told FOX 12 he believes the thieves likely had inside of knowledge of the company’s operations. He said Shadow Box Farms is offering a reward to anyone with information that leads to an arrest.
“Knowing who did it and seeing that they got justice would be rewarding,” Winner said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the company remained unsure if their insurance company would fully cover the loss.
Portland police say they are investigating.
