Tip Leads to Arrest of Three, Seizure of $4 Million in ‘Pot’

Three men were arrested after federal and city narcotics agents late Friday seized nearly two tons of marijuana with a street value estimated at $4 million.

Mark Scherer, 34, and Dave Wollert, 32, both of New Mexico, and Bruce Eickelberg, 34, of San Diego were booked at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on suspicion of possession and conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

Sgt. Dennis Sesma, head of the San Diego police narcotics “street team,” said police received an anonymous tip from someone who claimed he “smelled bulk quantities of marijuana” in an area of northern San Diego County.

Sesma said that officers followed a truck pulling a 12-foot trailer as it drove to a row of Quonset huts and an unidentified driver loaded bales of marijuana.

Police, joined by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, followed the truck to Encinitas, where the driver stopped and walked away, Sesma said.

Scherer and Wollert then got in the truck and drove off, Sesma said, and were stopped within a few minutes by police.

Sesma said police had to make unusual arrangements to search the vehicle. While they detained the men, officers set up a three-way telephone conference call among a deputy district attorney and a judge to get approval to search the truck and trailer. Officers found about 3,600 pounds of marijuana bound in 35-pound bales stuffed in the trailer.

Narcotics agents then returned to the Quonset huts and arrested Eickelberg, who rented the building and lived in a nearby house. Another telephone conference yielded a second search warrant at 2 a.m. Saturday. The search turned up a small amount of narcotics and several thousand dollars in the house and hut, Sesma said.