14 DAY TRIAL // A 45-year-old woman nicknamed the “pot mom” has been freed on bail in New York. A judge allowed Andrea Sanderlin to head back home.
She will be wearing an ankle monitor but she will not return to her Scarsdale mansion. The prosecution alleges that Sanderlin paid for said mansion, her late model Mercedes and her all-in-all lavish lifestyle with money from drug transactions.
"For all I know, she has millions of dollars or she could have a couple hundred dollars. [...] She hasn't worked, but she's living in Scarsdale and driving a Mercedes. I can't add that up," Judge Steven M. Gold noted during the bail hearing.
The suit claims that Sanderlin was running a million-dollar operation in the upscale Scarsdale neighborhood. She would raise the plants in Queens, where police raided a warehouse registered to Sanderlin.
According to the Examiner, said May 20 raid yielded 3,000 cannabis plants worth an estimated $3 million (€2.3 million).
The storage facility was rented by her company "Fantastic Enterprises," which was started in July of 2007.
Before Sanderlin's arraignment in federal court in Brooklyn, Gold asked the defendant to produce co-signers for her bond.
While she did so, he is not convinced that they are acquainted with the suspect. He has asked her to have her father and other family members sign the paperwork.
"She doesn't know these people. [...] She has to have people (on the bond) who she cares about," Gold described.
Sanderlin is to get back and stay in her apartment in Manhattan until her July 15 court appearance, which will also mark the beginning of her trial.
"She's very happy to be going home to be with her children. [...] She's going to take a hot shower, eat a good meal and try to get on with the rest of her life," lawyer Joel Winograd says, as relayed by Medical Daily.