Albany

Marijuana by mail.

That's the latest trend facing drug investigators in the Capital Region. And they say the weed is mostly coming from one place — the West Coast.

Several drug rings in recent years have been broken up, including one group which was sending pot from northern California to the region — hidden in furniture — to be sold around Albany and Troy.

While investigators say they still see a degree of high-grade pot arrive from Canada, where various criminal organizations have conspired to smuggle the product across the Akwesasne reservation straddling the border, the arrival West Coast weed has far surpassed it.

"There's clearly been an increase in marijuana coming from the West Coast to the East Coast," said Assistant District Attorney Francisco Calderon, who prosecutes drug trafficking rings for Albany County District Attorney David Soares.

Calderon said the pot gets sent via U.S. Postal Service mail, United Parcel Service and Federal Express. In September, Calderon secured the guilty plea of Billy Lou, 23, of Sacramento, Calif., who moved more than 50 pounds of high-grade marijuana from California to the area. Police arrested Lou on Aug. 15 after stopping his car at Wolf Road and Ulenski Drive in Colonie; he had more than four pounds of marijuana wrapped in vacuum-sealed bags.

In 2009, the Justice Department's now-defunct National Drug Intelligence Center found in its annual drug market analysis that "Mexican marijuana is occasionally shipped to the Albany area from the West Coast through package delivery services."

Authorities say such trafficking has only increased since then. In one local case, Marcus Kirkwood, 29, of California, received 60 to 80 kilos of marijuana from Shane T. Fitzgerald, who shipped the pot to the Capital Region. The pot came from Humboldt County, located about 200 miles north of San Francisco.

Kirkwood and his brother, Nathaniel Innes, had designated sites around Troy for Fitzgerald to send shipments of seven to 10 pounds of pot, according to court papers. All three men were convicted, as was Galina German, Innes' wife and a former attorney. Authorities said the group moved hundreds of pounds of marijuana from the West Coast between Dec. 1, 2010, and May 13, 2011, hiding it in furniture and even a microwave oven.

"We have seen marijuana being sent from the West Coast to the East Coast in different mail venues ... business, commercial and governmental mail sources," said Erin Mulvey, a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's New York Division. "But they're not the source. Basically they're the conduit that the drug traffickers are taking advantage of to get the marijuana from California, the West Coast, Arizona, to the New York Capital Region."

She said most of the California crop comes from Mexican-based drug trafficking organizations.

rgavin@timesunion.com • 518-434-2403 • @RobertGavinTU