(UnitedVoice.com) – It’s not unusual for criminals to operate legitimate businesses that are just façades for illegal operations. Massage parlors that are actually brothels are a perfect example of that. Now, police in California are alleging that a pizza shop was a cover for an underground ring.
On June 22, Lillian L. Carranza, the commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Gang and Narcotics Division, posted photos from a raid of a local pizza parlor. She said the department’s lab was working to “dismantle and render an illicit Super Lab safe.” The business was reportedly making THC honey oil.
Let's just say is not pizza! 🍕 Commander 70 David show me code 6 with #GND Lab Squad 7300 block Radford @LAPDNorthHwdDiv Your Lab Squad working to dismantle and render an illicit Super Lab safe. Operating in a business area next to a Pet Hospital! 🐾🐕 🥼 🧪 🧫 Doing their part… pic.twitter.com/Ma0EHZoOhn
— Lillian L. Carranza🇺🇸 (@LAPDCARRANZA) June 23, 2023
In another social media post, the department stated that “criminals are getting more creative by the day.” But said police are keeping the “city safe one clever bust at a time” and joked that the pizza place wouldn’t be making any more deliveries.
Carranza said labs like the one in the pizza shop have exploded in the past and caused “injuries, property damage and sometimes death.”
The drug bust came just days after an LAPD K9 officer found a massive stash of drugs, money, and weapons inside a vending machine. Among the drugs seized were a kilogram of fentanyl and 15 pounds of heroin. The fentanyl could have killed more than half a million people if it had made its way onto the streets.
A year ago, in July 2022, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida accused Blerim Ljena, 49, of operating a drug ring inside his restaurant, Brickhouse Pizza. Law enforcement raided the restaurant. Detectives ultimately found hydrocodone, morphine, alprazolam, lorazepam, oxycodone, Dilaudid, marijuana, cocaine, hydromorphone, methamphetamine, and GHB. Authorities later charged Ljena with a number of crimes related to the sale of drugs, including five counts of trafficking amphetamine and one count of trafficking GHB.
As for the drug raid of the pizza parlor in Los Angeles, police have not identified a suspect yet.
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