California's cannabis cash grab: Why homeowners are being fined MILLIONS after moving into properties once used to grow illegal weed

Retired couple Corrine and Doug Thomas thought they had found their 'forever' home when they bought a rustic property nestled in the middle of a redwood forest in Humboldt County, California.

It put an end to their three-year stint living in a motorhome, forced upon them after their previous home in Los Angeles was destroyed in the Woolsey Fire of 2018.

Instead, they had simply opened the next chapter in an ongoing nightmare.

Less than a week after moving in, Corinne, 70, and Doug, 74, who are both disabled and on fixed incomes, were slapped with fines that eventually grew to more than $1million because the previous owner had used the property for an illegal cannabis grow.

Astonishingly, they are among dozens of unwitting homeowners to have been targeted by Humboldt County, whose officials have been accused in a class action lawsuit of trying to 'squeeze every dollar' it can out of legalized marijuana 'at the expense of innocent people'.

Retiree Rhonda Olson, 64, faces fines of more than $7million because someone else grew weed on her property before she bought it.

And Blu Graham, 51, was hit with penalties of around $900,000 based on 'unfounded and uninvestigated allegations' that he was growing cannabis in his greenhouses, whereas in reality he was growing vegetables for his restaurant.

Similarly, a chicken farmer was prosecuted by the county for growing cannabis in a greenhouse in which he was in fact rearing chicks.

The extraordinary claims are laid bare in a lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice (IfJ).

Attorney Jared McClain told DailyMail.com that officials were 'lashing out' in an attempt to reap the promised financial rewards of legalization, which are yet to materialize.

But while law-abiding citizens are being caught out by this avaricious approach, the real black market in California continues to boom, with unlicensed grows now believed to outnumber legitimate farms by tenfold.

The county even acknowledges that homeowners such as Corrine, Doug and Rhonda have never grown cannabis.

But, according to McClain, the county position is that the current occupants are somehow responsible for any past violations at their property.

'It's obvious that we aren't involved with cannabis,' Doug told DailyMail.com 'We don't even drink alcohol. We're just old senior citizens. The county knows it, but they're still coming after us.

'They are at war with the community.'

He and and his wife, who run the non-profit Miracle Run Foundation for Autism, used insurance money from the 2018 fire to buy their new home in Humboldt, which sits on top of a ridge above the Avenue of the Giants.

Behind the home, there is a detached garage alongside a three-story building that the listing referred to as a workshop.

When the couple purchased the property, the workshop was empty and the electrical wiring inside had all been cut.

It is in this ramshackle barn that the county says was used to illegally grow cannabis two years earlier.

The Thomases were told that if they didn't demolish the building within ten days, they would face fines of $12,000 per day.

But they didn't have the $180,000 they were told it would cost to destroy the barn - and are now facing $1,080,000 in fines.

The couple are one of more than 1,200 Humboldt property owners charged with cannabis-related code violations since it was legalized for personal use in 2018, levying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

Of these, at least 48 landowners have appealed their penalties, but many more who have been unfairly targeted have chosen to settle, according to McClain.

This is because the county makes accused landowners 'wait indefinitely' for a hearing, while fines continue to accumulate, the lawsuit claims.

Blu Graham, for instance, asked for an appeal in 2018, and the county only agreed to finally schedule his hearing 4.5 years later when he was preparing to file the lawsuit.

The mess stems from officials' 'dragnet' approach to cannabis law enforcement, it is claimed.

Satellite images are used to show 'harmless things like greenhouses on a property', which are deemed sufficient evidence to accuse the landowner of growing marijuana illegally, the document states.

'The entire system is designed to generate money for the County as efficiently as possible—by forcing accused residents to pay the County even when they have done nothing wrong,' it adds.

McClain said that financial gains from legalization had not materialized as expected in Humboldt County, part of the Emerald Triangle in Northern California, the largest cannabis-producing region in the US.

This, in part, was because people no longer needed to be in the Humboldt mountains to grow weed, and cultivation spread south.

The county's indiscriminate approach to cannabis prosecution is an attempt to recover the 'missing money', McClain claims.

Yet the strategy appears to be doing little to tackle the real illicit weed market, which has flourished in the wake of legalization.

Legislators had hoped that the creation of a commercial market in 2021 would generate $5.3billion in taxed sales.

But it failed to account for the reality that decriminalizing a vast and highly profitable industry would open the floodgates to organized criminals and opportunists, for whom the reduced risks of prosecution incentivized their growth.

Mexican cartels have pounced, leading to massacres and worker exploitation tied to illegal grows in the state.

Meanwhile, enforcement efforts have been sporadic and under-resourced.

The plaintiffs in the Humboldt case suffered a setback in May last year, when a federal judge sided with the county and granted its motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The IfJ lodged an appeal, which has recently been heard by the Ninth District Court of Appeals.

A decision is pending. Livelihoods rest on its outcome.

'We lost our home of 35 years in the wildfires,' Doug said. 'If we lose this, we'll lose everything.'

DailyMail.com has contacted Humboldt County for comment.