Feds arrest suspect in LSD case with ties to UC Santa Cruz, Nevada County grow site

Federal drug agents in Sacramento have arrested an Oakland man on charges of possession with intent to distribute LSD and say he is linked to the seizure of thousands of tabs of the psychedelic drug, as well as hallucinogenic mushrooms and a suspected massive marijuana grow in Nevada County.

A federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday morning in Sacramento names Elan Efraim Moshe, 44, and says he has ties to a Santa Cruz County man who was sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for peddling LSD and other drugs to UC Santa Cruz students out of his house and a storage locker.

Moshe was arrested Monday afternoon by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and is being held in the Sacramento County Main Jail without bail, online jail records say.

His arrest stems from a DEA investigation into the sale of LSD and other drugs dating back to 2018, and includes surveillance of Moshe that tracked him to a large site in rural Nevada County that authorities believe is being used to grow marijuana, court papers say.

Moshe, who was on pre-trial release out of Placer County on separate drug charges, is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Sacramento Tuesday afternoon.

An affidavit by DEA Special Agent Brian Nehring that was unsealed Tuesday says the case stems from undercover drug buys from a drug trafficking organization in the Sacramento region.

Undercover drug buys led agents to suspect

“During the course of this investigation, and while acting in an undercover capacity, I purchased multiple 1000-count quantities of LSD and multiple ounce quantities of MDMA from multiple members of this DTO,” Nehring wrote. “In 2018, I arrested a particular member of this group and seized multiple 1000-count quantities of LSD (in excess of 10,000 dosage units) as well as large amounts of other drugs.”

That individual pointed drug enforcement agents to a second suspect and location, where between 50,000 and 100,000 doses of LSD were seized, and where that suspect, who is not named in the affidavit, identified Moshe as the supplier of multiple grams of LSD at a price of just less than $10,000 per gram, court filings say.

Court records say Moshe’s criminal history includes a March 1996 conviction in Santa Clara County for possession of a controlled substance, as well as a December 1999 arrest in Santa Clara County that resulted in convictions for evading a police officer and possession.

“Moshe also has multiple subsequent DUI, driving on a suspended license and similar misdemeanor arrests and convictions,” court records say.

Suspect tied to UC Santa Cruz drug case?

The investigation then led to UC Santa Cruz, where a man named Matthew Hutchings was arrested in May 2019 at his home in Soquel and the seizure of LSD, MDMA, 33 pounds of psilocybin mushrooms and “multiple firearms,” court records say.

“I contacted Detective Robert Locke-Paddon of the University of California Santa Cruz Police Department, who was the case agent with regards to the investigation of Hutchings,” Nehring wrote.

“Detective Locke-Paddon related to me that he had learned that Hutchings was distributing large amounts of various drugs to students at the University and that as a result of the search warrant he had seized several 1000-count quantities of gelatin tab LSD (believed to be between 5,000 and 10,000 dosage units of this type of carrier medium) of various colors, including green, from Hutchings’ residence and storage locker.”

In a room along with the LSD and the mushrooms, investigators also found a Wells Fargo Visa platinum debit card in Moshe’s name, court records say.

Hutchings subsequently took a guilty plea and got a 10-year sentence, court filings say, while Moshe got arrested in Placer County in March 2020 after authorities received a call for medical help about a man lying in the road north of Auburn.

Suspect found passed out in road near Auburn

There, paramedics and a Placer County deputy found Moshe, who was unresponsive and was taken to Sutter Roseville Medical Center, where he told a detective he had been at a party in Auburn, passed out and later left at someone’s request, court records say.

“Moshe stated one of the people at the residence had wanted him to leave early and that he did not remember how, but he had ended up in the passenger seat of his truck and this person had driven him off the property and left him in his vehicle at the intersection of Florence Lane and Florence Court, where he was found later that morning by a concerned citizen who had called the paramedics,” court records say. “Moshe said his cellphone and keys should be in his vehicle and that he was unclear as to whether he had been assaulted or not.”

The deputy who found Moshe in the roadway spotted a black backpack laying against Moshe’s 2019 Honda Ridgeline and found an ounce “of suspected MDMA, approximately 1,302 dosage units total of suspected gel tab LSD, and 148 gross grams of suspected psilocybin mushrooms,” court records say.

The LSD tabs “appeared similar if not identical to the unique, opaque green LSD gel tabs seized from Hutchings in Soquel,” court records say.

Moshe faces felony drug counts that are pending in Placer County Superior Court stemming from the party incident in Auburn, and a federal search warrant issued for his iPhone, which was seized during that arrest, led investigators to a series of text messages and other communications through the Signal and Telegram apps, court records say.

“In these discussions, other individuals requested ‘sheets’ from Moshe in quantities up to twenty ‘sheets,’” court records say, adding that sheets “is common slang for a 100-dosage unit amount of LSD.”

“Moshe also discussed having shipped approximately 1,000 dosage units of LSD to a particular customer in Arizona,” court records say. “It was also clear from these various communications stored in the phone that Moshe was actively engaged in operating marijuana cultivation and distribution operations and that he was manufacturing butane honey oil (BHO), a form of THC extracted from marijuana utilizing a solvent, most commonly butane.”

Cell phone GPS led agents to suspected pot grow

Another search warrant allowed investigators to obtain GPS information from a new cell phone Moshe was using, which led them to “a very rural portion of Nevada County just north and east of Nevada City,” court records say.

Authorities asked for help from the California Highway Patrol, which flew over the area and recorded “what appears to be an extensive apparent outdoor marijuana growing operation on these parcels,” court records say.

“I observed that there was a large cleared area, a quite visible deforested, bulldozed and delineated circular field from within the heavily forested canopy in the area comprising most of the property,” the DEA affidavit says. “In this area, there were what I believe based on my training and experience to be numerous marijuana plants, several large water/nutrient tanks near what appeared in my training and experience to be pump and irrigation equipment as well as two large greenhouses/hoop house structures covered in opaque plastic.”