Prosecutors in New York have dropped charges against a man they accused of picking up 106 pounds of marijuana after a subsequent investigation discovered it was actually just legal hemp bound for CBD shop in Brooklyn.
The case against Ronen Levy for marijuana possession was dismissed on Tuesday and confirmed in a tweeted statement by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Levy was arrested on November 2 after he was caught trying to pick up 106 pounds worth of plants – with an estimated ‘street value’ of $17,000 – from a police station.
Authorities were alerted by a FedEx employee who reported that they believed they were transporting drugs – despite the fact the goods had all the proper documentation and had already been examined by police in Vermont before it shipped.
Prosecutors in New York have dropped charges against a man they accused of picking up 106 pounds of marijuana after a subsequent investigation discovered it was actually just hemp bound for CBD shop in Brooklyn
The case against Ronen Levy for marijuana possession was dismissed on Tuesday and confirmed in a tweeted statement by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
The police department confiscated the plants and then called Ronen Levy, telling him he could come and pick them from the 75th precinct. But when he arrived he was arrested instead.
The NYPD then bragged about confiscating the haul of what they believed to be drugs on social media, calling it the work of ‘precision policing and relentless follow-up’.
But Levy, who owns Green Angel CBD and The Pet Cure with his brother Oren, immediately protested otherwise, pointing out that the officers had actually mistakenly seized hemp, a legal substance used to treat a variety of physical and mental ailments.
Despite his pleas, Ronen Levy was detained for 36 hours and was later charged with six counts of marijuana possession.
‘They treated him like a criminal, they treated him like a piece of s**t,’ Oren Levy told the Huffington Post at the time.
The case against Ronen Levy for marijuana possession was dismissed on Tuesday and confirmed in a tweeted statement by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez
The police department confiscated the plants and then called Ronen Levy (pictured with brother Oren), telling him he could come and pick them up. But when he arrived at the 75th precinct, he was arrested instead
On Tuesday, Ronen also criticized the department, saying: ‘Everything could have been cut short just by looking at the right papers and going the right channels.
‘That was not done. Thank God today that the court looked over all the paperwork and dropped our charges.’
The brothers say both of the boxes contained paperwork that explained the shipper of the package was a registered VT cannabis hemp grower.
The officer in Vermont who signed off the package and wrote that he ‘advised the company that this does appear to be Legal Hemp and not Marijuana and the police was not going to seize it.’
However, the documentation did little to stop officers from NYPD’s 75th precinct from arresting Ronen Levy.
During his 36 hours in police custody, Levy said he was only provided with a little bit of water, dry cereal and a piece of packaged bread that he decided to use as a pillow, rather than eat.
‘From the second they put cuffs on me I was pretty much in torture,’ Levy told HuffPost. ‘It’s 30 degrees in there, my teeth didn’t stop chattering from the second I got there until I left.’
The brothers say both of the boxes contained paperwork that explained the shipper of the package was a registered VT cannabis hemp grower. The officer in Vermont who signed off the package wrote that he ‘advised the company that this does appear to be Legal Hemp and not Marijuana and the police was not going to seize it’
Levy said he has never been in trouble with the law before, and that his and his brothers’ businesses have lost revenue since the charges were filed.
‘My business is at risk right now,’ said Oren Levy to CBS. ‘I’m in business to help people and we’re getting hurt because of this. It doesn’t make sense to me, this should have never happened
As a result, they plan to file a notice of claim for damages.
Meanwhile, the NYPD’s tweet bragging about the false bust is still on their official News Twitter account.