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SKOWHEGAN — A California man arrested in one of the dozens of law enforcement raids on cannabis grow houses in 2024 will avoid jail time and pay a $10,000 fine.
The plea deal for Dongming Liao, 43, who the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office arrested after searching a residence on Cooley Road in Harmony in April 2024, came amid a series of motion hearings scheduled this week and next in other similar cases that have been lingering on the court’s docket. Most of the cases, like Liao’s, date back to arrests two years ago.
Wednesday’s proceeding at the Somerset County Superior Court was set to be a hearing on a motion to suppress evidence.
Instead, Liao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty to Class B marijuana cultivation, and Superior Court Chief Justice Robert E. Mullen ordered him to pay the $10,000 fine by April 29. The Class B offense is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Liao, who was assisted by Cantonese-English interpreters but answered questions from Mullen and spoke with his attorney in English, also agreed to forfeit $1,882 in cash seized during the search of the Harmony residence. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the forfeiture of a 2017 Ford Transit van and return it to Liao.
District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, the elected top prosecutor for Somerset and Kennebec counties, said the plea agreement included a cap on the requested sentence. She argued for a sentence of three years in prison, with all but six months suspended, and three years of probation, as well as a $10,000 fine.
After the hearing, Maloney said that offer has been on the table for about a year in all other similar cases pending.
“I’m always comfortable with leaving the ultimate sentencing decision with the court,” Maloney said. “That is the court’s responsibility. My responsibility is to bring forward the case and to ask for the sentence that I believe to be correct.”
Liao’s attorney Darrick X. Banda, of the Augusta law firm Bourget & Banda, argued for no jail or probation time and a $5,000 fine.
He said after the hearing that Maloney’s offer of jail time was “too harsh.”
“The Legislature is OK with us having pot stores on every corner and two or three on the same street, and they need to go back and readdress the marijuana laws,” said Banda, who added that he personally believes cannabis should be illegal.
“If growing marijuana is not that big of a deal, then it shouldn’t be a Class B felony to have 500 plants,” he continued. “I understand that we want people to be licensed, we want people to comply with the law, but those criminal statutes were in place long before we decided to legalize marijuana.”
Mullen, the judge, settled on the $10,000 fine as the sentence, noting that although the 3,400 plants seized from Liao’s property were much more than the 500-plant threshold for the Class B offense, Liao had no criminal record, took responsibility for his crime and appeared to have low potential to reoffend.
Neither prison time nor probation would be likely to have any real effect, Mullen said.
Mullen, however, did leave Liao with a stern warning: Stay out of the state of Maine and any criminal enterprises. Referencing the saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” Mullen said any future convictions would result in a much more severe punishment.
In October, Mullen urged prosecutors and defense attorneys to come to the table to resolve what he called a “logjam” of grow house cases — an effort he referenced while handing down Liao’s sentence. He said at the time he would accept plea deals that would result in no jail time but large fines.
Prosecutors have filed a total of 16 cases related to grow house busts in Somerset County. Of those, only one other has been resolved via plea agreement.
In December 2024, Xi Qiang Zhao, 58, of Skowhegan and Brooklyn, New York, pleaded guilty to one Class D count of marijuana cultivation with a deferred disposition. Court records show the deferred disposition was successful and prosecutors dismissed the charge in December 2025.
That case got a different offer due to “exigent circumstances,” Maloney said Wednesday.
One other case in Somerset County was dismissed as federal prosecutors filed related charges in U.S. District Court, records show. That defendant, Jiamin Liao, 30,of New York, pleaded guilty to the federal charges in January and has yet to be sentenced.
Most of the grow house busts, including those in Somerset County, were in the first half of 2024. The sheriff’s office executed two dozen search warrants in 2024 and 2025, Sheriff Dale Lancaster said. Law enforcement agencies in other parts of the state also made arrests amid the crackdown.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maine said in May 2024 that federal authorities believe many illegal growing operations in Maine could have been connected to organized, transnational crime organizations with ties to China. Lancaster said previously he believes the operations in Maine fund the production of fentanyl in China.
At one point, suspected operations in Maine totaled more than 200, but that total later fell to below 100, federal prosecutors said.
Some homes have become legal, medical cannabis growing facilities, a Morning Sentinel investigation found. Others used as illegal growing sites have headed to the real estate market.
Despite calls from the administration of President Donald Trump to crack down on the illicit activity, enforcement in Maine appears to have slowed, leaving local law enforcement asking for more help from the feds. U.S. Attorney Andrew Benson, a former Maine District Court judge who often presided in Skowhegan, declined interview requests in recent months.
At one point during Wednesday’s proceeding, Mullen asked the attorneys if the grow operations busted in Harmony would have been legal if it had proper licensing.
Banda responded he was unsure, as he was unaware of all of the Office of Cannabis Policy rules.
“I think it’s fair to say that a large portion of the activity probably could’ve been licensed, and given other variables, perhaps could’ve been fully legal,” Banda said.
Maloney said the lack of license disadvantaged businesses that do participate in the regulatory process. Other harm included the pesticides Liao was believed to have used, she said. Plus, Maloney said, the 3,400 plants seized were an “extraordinary number.”
“Those are the reasons why the state does see this a particularly egregious infringement,” Maloney said.
Jake covers public safety, courts and immigration in central Maine. He started reporting at the Morning Sentinel in November 2023 and previously covered all kinds of news in Skowhegan and across Somerset… More by Jake Freudberg
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