Overgrow.com Busted, Servers Seized!
 

http://smokedot.org/content/view/315/2/

Overgrow.com, Cannabisworld.com, Heaven's Stairway Seed Company, and Eurohemp.com Shut Down and Servers Seized by Canadian Police.
Now it appears Heaven's Stairway Seeds (hempqc.com), Cannabisworld.com, Overgrow.com, Eurohemp.com have been shut down and the owners arrested in Canada; all their web properties seized, including the physical servers that held massive databases on thousands of growers, and tens of thousands of photographs of cannabis plants. Seed companies by the dozens used both Overgrow.com and Cannabisworld.com as a main trading ground. Over 40 seed companies had customer service interactive forums on these sites.

All the information held on those servers is now in the hands of police. It is not known what charges have been laid nor against whom. That police have not boasted about this seizure means the investigation is continuing, before any affected parties can react.


http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4638.html

New Information Regarding Police Seizures of Overgrow.com
by Marc Emery (03 Feb, 2006) Overgrow.com, Cannabisworld.com, Heaven's Stairway Seed Company and Eurohemp.com Owners Apprehended


Overgrow.com unavailable
Cannabis Culture has developed a timeline of events we believe accurately account for the disappearance of Overgrow.com, Cannabisworld.com, Heaven's Stairway Seeds (hempqc.com), and Eurohemp.

On Monday evening, resident of Montreal Richard Calrisian, the owner of the four websites, was contacted by his web service providers in Vancouver where his servers were situated. They told him that there may be a problem, regarding a police investigation. RC told his provider to shut down the websites immediately.

Within hours, the police (it's unknown what kind of police) apparently entered the server site in Vancouver with a warrant and apprehended the hardware that housed the four web sites.

In the early morning of Tuesday, police in Montreal moved in and arrested RC, his wife, family members and an unknown number of employees.

It is alleged that RC, a pseudonym, is being held at Riviere-des-Prairie (RDP) jail in Montreal, and his wife in is Tanguay jail, across the river from RDP. Cannabis Culture called the prison and found no one there under the name Richard Calrisian.

The bail hearing should be on Monday, but it is unusual that a bail hearing has not yet been held. Typically they take place within 24 hours of arrest, unless an investigation is ongoing and the accused are being held temporarily without bail. This may be because there is a risk that the arrest news might inform other persons who are also under investigation.

Earlier reports of a drug bust in Hearst, Ontario are not related the seizure of Overgrow.com websites.


More information to come, when provided

That sucks. I remember overgrow when he was making hacks for vB2.

Why do I not sound surprised :)

From what I read they had half the worlds seed punters using there site to advertize and sell there seeds there (drugs).

Good. About damn time the law punched them back.

Wow that's a bit of a surprise.

I thought weed was legal in canada? I don't smoke, I dunno...

Might have been the fact that people were selling weed on the forum that was illegal. Or maybe its only legal for medical purposes.

I have a friend in canada and I THINK he said it is legal to have an ounce.

Good though. It was about time, as filburt said.

Good stuff

Selling it on the internet means younger kids can get hold of it.

Not really. It's easy for a kid with money to get the stuff on the streets.

In Canada it's only legal if it is prescribed for medical purposes. It's illegal to buy anywhere except at specified places and you basically can't smoke it without a doctors note. That being said - just try and get busted for it. You have to be in the big time before the police start worrying about you here. They can't even keep up with busting the grow-ops they know exist.

Nat

"Canadian Gal"

Think about who's fault that would be. How would they be able to pay for it?

He wasn't very bright then, fancy running an illegal site on servers in the same country .....

I thought you where allowed to sell cannabis seeds (legaly). Anyway its there own fault.

The stuff was not sold on the site. It only hosted a (large) faq on growing, a strain database that linked to seed banks, and a gallery for the users.

Shame to see it go.

What a ++++ing joke. There was nothing illegal going on, on that site.

Well yeah, I guess telling people how to grow it is illegal too. :p

There can be a High price for this sort of thing ;)

From all reports, it appears the operators of Overgrow.com were arrested for some other, yet unknown (likely growing), reasons, and that Overgrow.com was collatoral damage.

I have to wonder if Jelsoft is going to distance itself and remove the credit to Overgrow from future versions of Vbulletin.

I suggest they take on hosting in the Netherlands. I don't see how information about growing could be a criminal activity. Selling is another thing :)

But even if they hosted in a place like the Netherlands, how would the owners of the site fair if they lived in a country were it was outlawed.

I would have thought while the server was legal in that country, the owners would still be at risk because they might lived in another country were it's not legal.

For Jelsoft to remove the credit would be terrible I think. Nomatter how long ago his contributions were made part of stock code or how that code may have changed he has helped shape the product we have today.

In the UK seeds are legal. It is only illegal to cultivate. Although posession, is mostly ignored by law enforcement. For instance, I smoke publically [obviously I don't flaunt it] and have never been approached. If the police noticed though I guess I would only be arrested if I was near a school or in the city centre.

Teaching people how to grow is not ilegal! I don't understand why they seized the server.

To quote the actor Stacey Keach from the Up in Smoke movies, "The surest way to make them bleed is to bust their *** and take their weed". :p

:sigh:

Why not show a little respect, huh?

I don't agree with the use of marijuana either, but I can also control myself from posting something like that.

Imagine you losing your hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work on your website (not to mention the money that goes into keeping it up) and having some snotty kid say, "Good. They deserved it."

Won't happen, I don't promote the use nor tell people how to grow/use illegal substances.

If what I have read is true they did deserve it as Overgrow was used to sell the substance across different countries.

Well they did. Name one thing that was legal about their site's content.

I for one am pissed that their name is in the vB credits. It may be the only file I edit in my vB installation just to remove it. I will not have any part of my forum associated with the site's content, particularly because it's explicitly forbidden to speak of it in my forum rules.

BTW, I'm a college-educated 21-year-old with years of professional (i.e., paid job in a company/government) development experience. I'm not a snotty kid, nor did I verbally (well, textually) attack you, and I'd appreciate some respect. The moderator status alone should convey respect, whether I'm 21 or 12.

As far as I know, discussion was not illegal and whether you or not we specifically agree with the subject - free speech is something that we should be supporting.

If it has gone above and beyond free speech, thats another thing but all I've seen so far is speculation here about what was going on.

I support free speech. I do not support speech of any kind on illegal topics. You could distort it to a view that discussing illegal activities is a form of conspiracy to commit the crimes in question.

Let's say I opened up a forum about homicide. That's a crime. Would your opinion change?

21 is still very very young in the full spectrum of life and in the professional world you are considered a kid. Moderatorship may command respect in regards of your knowledge of the rules here but outside of that realm your opinions are still subject to debate as any other member.

No my opinion wouldn't change because freedom of speech is still freedom of speech.

What if it was ruled illegal to practice christianity - would you be against people discussing various parts of the new testiment? What if it were ruled illegal to protest, would you be against discussions questioning certain policies? Where would it end?

You guys are forgetting one thing....Freedom of speech is an American right and not global.

Hence you becoming a forum moderator.

You don't support free speech if you don't support speech of any kind. IMO that's what the 'free' means is that you're free to say what you choose without being punished. What has happened here is horrible and I hope things are resolved quickly for the owners and operators.

Just because you side with the government doesn't mean anyone should be thankful that 'free thinkers' should have their websites permanently closed. What about the fact that now the canadian government has IP records and other contact information for thousands of members, message logs, private message logs, etc. does that make some of you happy? Do you hope that my government causes me and my website so much trouble?

I couldn't do that. I've never once been to the website.

I'm not going to get into it with you, but the above post just pretty much provides me with more reason to believe that what I said was true. Maybe not the "kid" part. Perhaps, "Snotty young adult" would suffice?

:cheeky:

I am just playing around.. but come on.. I'm just stating that what you originally posted was rather disrespectful. And coming from a moderator?

If you want respect from the community, I suggest giving some of your own. Just because you may have better grammar than a lot of people here, and that your website doesn't practice the growth of illegal paraphernalia doesn't mean that you should disrespect someone who does.

Maybe I'm being a little too harsh? But if there's one thing I can't stand, it's someone who thinks they're better than someone else and I happen to get that impression from you quite a bit. :ermm:

I don't find any of it disrespectful. Obviously he was doing more than just talking about weed because Overgrow is not the only site that discusses this.

This is not a case of free speech being shot down like everyone wants to make it out to be

Wow they took their time doing that, I said it would happen when I once visited the site in the days of Karma and it must have been one of the biggest forums around. Was really an obvious attraction for a haul in, not because talking how to grow is illegal, but all the users on there who openly posting about doing it.

Wont be long before big open boards like cdfreaks is done aswell, not because they have illegal stuff there but because theirs hordes of idiots posting there openly admitting to using filesharing bla bla.

Oh and I think unless its changed but importing seeds into the UK is illegal, but possesion of them in the UK isnt. I maybe wrong maybe not.

Sites like these will get busted for mass evidence purposes, why would the old bill want to run round trying to find these people when they all post on such places. All they are doing is dobbing themselves in in the long term.

Sorry to hear that. As stated above, I didn't know it was illegal to discuss things that are illegal.

I am disheartened to see a member of the forum staff here take a "good riddance" stance towards the closing of any site. I've never once been to the site but if they did enough to have their name in the VB credits? I'd say that deserves some modicum of respect.

As they were apparently discussing the use of marijuana, please keep in mind that the laws against marijuana use are man's law and isn't even the law of the land everywhere.

I'd go into my views on the unfairness of the laws against marijuana but I'll save that for another time and place.

For the record, no, I'm not a drug user of any sort (unless you count the occasional margarita).

It is not illegal to discuss things illegal but OBVIOUSLY more was going on with the owner of the site and the site itself.

The discussion of marijuana is not illegal and was not the reason the site was shut down. The fact that the message boards were being used as a means for drug traffic was in fact the reason. Marijuana usage is illegal world wide which makes distrobution illegal regardless of ones location. If searching through the forum's PMs and logs will help hinder drug traffic then I would consider myself a supporter of the governments decision. As far as I am concerned when someone engages in illegal activity (movement of an illegal substance), their personal privacy is all but law enforcement's right.

You can find the discussion of marijuana just about anywhere you want to look (schools, movies, music) so its pretty plain that something other than "marijuana discussion" was going on.

Pretty bold statement for someone who has no idea what hes talking about. There was obviously something illegal at hand or else there would have been no intervention.