Authorities seized over 20 pounds of psychedelic mushrooms inside a grow house in Lehigh Twp. on June 7 on a tip from a distraught wife concerned about her children.<\/p>\n
Yuriy Smirnov, 63, of 17 Tobyhanna Road, faces two felony counts of manufacturing or delivery of a controlled substance, in addition to misdemeanor possession charges.<\/p>\n
On June 6, state police responded to Tobyhanna State Park for a welfare check on Smirnov\u2019s wife and her two children.<\/p>\n
She informed troopers that she fled her residence because her husband was running a mushroom and marijuana grow operation inside their home and she feared for her children\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n
Troopers transported the woman and her children to a hotel for the night.<\/p>\n
Authorities then went to Smirnov\u2019s Wayne County residence, where he consented to a search of the home and admitted growing mushrooms there.<\/p>\n
Inside a room on the first floor of the residence, investigators found 60 containers holding mushrooms stacked on shelving units.<\/p>\n
The next day, Pennsylvania state police Clandestine Laboratory Response Team responded to the residence with a search warrant.<\/p>\n
While inside the residence, investigators located an extensive mushroom growing operation, a large quantity of plastic totes containing mushrooms growing at various stages, in addition to jars containing mushrooms, loaded syringes and processed marijuana.<\/p>\n
In addition investigators found equipment consistent with a grow operation including containers, jars, dryers, capsules and spray bottles.<\/p>\n
In total, investigators seized about 20 pounds of mushrooms from the residence.<\/p>\n
During an interview with Smirnov, troopers learned that he had been conducting the growing operation for about a year.<\/p>\n
He remains at the Wayne County Correctional Facility in lieu of $200,000 bail.<\/p>\n
Smirnov waived his preliminary hearing Wednesday and his charges were transferred to Wayne County Court.<\/p>\n
A formal arraignment in the case is scheduled for Aug. 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authorities seized over 20 pounds of psychedelic mushrooms inside a grow house in Lehigh Twp. on June 7…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,182,139,28,178,180,179,1481],"class_list":["post-225413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-wayne-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}