Miami Police Found $22 Million in the Home of a Gardening Store Owner Who Sold Marijuana

For nearly a decade, Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez ran a popular gardening supply store in Miami that was frequented by pot growers. He sold equipment for legal—and illegal—plant growing. 

His business became so popular that he hid $22 million—mostly in bundles of $100 bills and in heat-sealed bags stuffed in two dozen five-gallon buckets—in a secret room off the attic in his home because he didn’t report it to the government. 

Then his business came crashing down in 2016 after a Miami police investigation led officers to raiding his store and his Miami Lakes home and uncovering his hidden cash. It was the largest cash forfeiture by Miami police. 

Hernandez-Gonzalez was arrested and accused of violating the federal Bank Secrecy Act by laundering millions of dollars he made through his business. He was sentenced by a Miami judge in 2018 to just over five years in prison for making more than a dozen illegal transactions in an attempt to hide money from the federal government, according to court documents.

The Miami Herald reported at the time that defense lawyers argued Hernandez-Gonzalez was a “brilliant businessman forced into financial shenanigans because banks would not accept cash from businesses linked to the marijuana industry.”

"He was a victim of his own success. He made so much money. So much of it was cash that he couldn't end up putting it into the banks," defense lawyer Philip Reizenstein told the paper.

A decade later, Smokin’ Aces director Joe Carnahan is using Hernandez-Gonzalez’s story as inspiration for his new action thriller, The Rip. Carnahan told GQ magazine that his friend was part of the Miami Tactical Narcotics division, which sparked the idea.

The movie, which stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, follows a team of Miami cops who find millions of dollars stashed in a house, “leading to distrust as outsiders learn about the huge seizure, making them question who to rely on,” per its logline. The film involves murder, corruption, distrust and a money-sniffing dog that is eventually given his own bulletproof vest.

Hernandez-Gonzalez was accused of not only selling supplies that marijuana growers could use at home, but the federal government said that from April to June 2016, he assisted traffickers in cultivating their products. During a related search warrant in Tennessee, police found 242 marijuana plants that were connected to Hernandez-Gonzalez through deposited funds that he received from the Tennessee marijuana traffickers. 

He put the money into business bank accounts he controlled, and he purchased USPS money orders with the narcotics proceeds. This, the government said, was a setup designed to conceal the location, source and ownership of the proceeds because it was illegal. 

When police raided his home on June 28, 2016, they found the $22 million stashed throughout it.

Police confidential informants tied Hernandez-Gonzalez to the drug trade, an arrest affidavit said. Then, through a wire-tapped phone, investigators heard Hernandez-Gonzalez give advice on how to keep pot plants healthy.

They searched his plant shop first and found bundles of money. Police said at the time that Hernandez-Gonzalez gave them permission to search his home, where police dogs led them to even more cash, this time stashed in a secret room off his attic. They also found pod seeds, steroids and a loaded Tec-9 pistol with an extended clip.

Law enforcement seized more than $665,000 in currency and $42,000 in money orders from his business.

Hernandez-Gonzalez, then 45, was sentenced in April 2018 by U.S. District Court Judge Robert N. Scola to 65 months in federal prison, forfeiture of $18 million in seized U.S. currency and $42,051 in seized blank money orders.

"The primary mission of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the protection of our employees, our customers and, thus, our communities to ensure that the Postal Service is not used to avoid federal reporting requirements or launder drug trafficking proceeds,” Miami Division Inspector in Charge Antonio J. Gomez said at the time.