Opinion ID: 1212404
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Kaplan's Marijuana Distribution Business

Text: In the mid-1980s and again beginning in 1991, Kaplan was engaged in marijuana trafficking. During those periods, the least he distributed in a given year was between 500 and 1,000 pounds. In his best year, he distributed 12,000 or 13,000 pounds of marijuana ( see Tr. 443), for which his personal profit was [p]robably a couple of million dollars ( id. at 832). Kaplan had several discussions with Eppolito and Caracappa about his marijuana business during those years. Both of them had asked me together and separately if I wanted them to help me in any way that they wouldthey would follow my truck in a car or surveil my warehouses and see if I had any heat on me, and any[ ]way that they could help me, they were willing to do it. They said they don't want any money for it, it's just a friendship situation, and I told them I appreciate it but we're doing certain things together and this has nothing to do with that, and I don't want to involve them in that business. (Tr. 783.) Kaplan said it was not frugality that led him to decline their offer; they offered to do it for nothing, out of friendship. ( Id. )