An Oregon marijuana grower was outed to police by satellite images of his farm viewable on Google Earth, according to the Grants Pass Daily Courier (via CNET). While the satellite images are usually far from up-to-date, Curtis W. Croft had been at the pot growing game long enough that even the infrequently refreshed Google Earth was able to catch him.

The local police were originally tipped off when Croft was reported to have been bragging about his prodigious ganja crop. Someone in the force then had the insight to check Croft's property on Google Earth; sure enough, they spotted row upon row of crops. "Aerial reconnaissance" confirmed that the Google Earth images were still accurate.

Medical marijuana is legal in the state of Oregon, but Croft did not have permission to be growing the quantity he was.

Google Earth images can be years out of date, so they're far from an ideal research tool for identifying current criminal activity. But this is far from the first time that the service has been used to implicate someone: it was reportedly used to catch a man growing pot in Wisconsin back in 2006.