Man faces jail after fraudulently selling dirty socks as marijuana

A couple looking to buy a pound of marijuana gave up $2,800 for a backpack stuffed with dirty socks. The police will apparently end up with the money while a man from Ypsilanti, Michigan, loses his laundry and freedom. The July 8 fraudulent marijuana sale in Raisin Township was described on Wednesday in Lenawee County Circuit Court when Michael Rafael Suarez pleaded guilty to false pretenses between $1,000-$20,000. Suarez faces up to a 7½ year prison term with a habitual offender count added to his fraud conviction. He admitted having two prior felony convictions.

A Ypsilanti couple who admitted accompanying Suarez on the early morning trip to Lee Villa mobile home park in Raisin Township also pleaded guilty to reduced charges. They were released on personal recognizance bonds pending their sentencing hearings next month. The three were stopped by a Raisin Township police officer as they sped away from the mobile home park and ran a stop sign at about 1:30am. During the traffic stop, a man pulled up in a car and told the officer his girlfriend was just robbed by the people in the vehicle. Suarez said the whole thing started with a telephone call from a friend who told him to bring a pound of marijuana.



The friend had some people waiting to buy. “I didn’t bring any weed,” Suarez said. “I brought a bag of dirty socks.” Public defender John Glaser told the court that is the fraud Suarez is admitting in the plea bargain. “He brought socks instead of marijuana. That’s the false pretenses,” Glaser said. A purse containing $2,800 cash taken from the would-be marijuana buyers was found in the car with Suarez, Joshua Wayne Cope, 37, and Rebecca Sue Sharp, 34, also of Ypsilanti. Cope and Sharp, who are married, both pleaded guilty to attempted possession of marijuana with intent to deliver.

Suarez said he tricked the couple into driving him to the mobile home park. “I actually lied to them about what we were going there for,” he told Judge Anna Marie Anzalone. During her plea hearing, Sharp said she believed Suarez had a bag of marijuana in their car when they drove to Raisin Township. Her attorney asked for a personal recognizance bond so Sharp can return to her job as a manager at a McDonald’s restaurant in Ann Arbor and to care for her four children, left in the care of Cope’s parents. The $2,800 impounded as evidence will now be subject to a civil drug seizure claim, said Raisin Township Police Chief Kevin Grayer.