Alaska Police Raid Cannabis Club Run By Reporter Who Quit on Live TV
Alaska Cannabis Club owner Charlo Greene said, "F*** it, I quit," while on air.
-- The cannabis club run by a former news reporter who used profanity on live television while announcing she was quitting her job is currently under police investigation.
Search warrants were served by the Anchorage Police Department at the Alaska Cannabis Club in Anchorage, Alaska, last Friday. The Alaska Cannabis Club is owned by former KTVA reporter Charlene Egby.
“Police received reports of the illegal sale of marijuana and other derivatives at a location that's been identified as the Alaska Cannabis Club,” the Anchorage Police Department said in a statement on its website.
Egby, known professionally as Charlo Greene, told ABC News she was not surprised by the raid.
“I have to stress that no arrests were made and no citations were issued. The police did however destroy the 9 mature and about a dozen immature medical cannabis plants on site - all within the legal cultivation bounds - and confiscated cellphones, computers and 2 vehicles (one of which was not included in the warrant),” Greene told ABC News in a statement.
Greene was reporting live for KTVA on the Alaska Cannabis Club in September, when she admitted to viewers that she actually owned the club and was quitting her job to fight for the legalization of marijuana.
The Alaska Cannabis Club is a network of medical marijuana patients throughout Alaska, Greene said. Since leaving KTVA, Greene said she’s received multiple job offers.
“On the local, on the national and on the international level, I've been receiving job offers,” Greene told ABC News’ “20/20” in an interview in October 2014. “I'm not going anywhere. You're going to see a lot more of me.”
Greene declined to name where any of the job offers were from.
“That decision was made before we started even filming that day story. I knew this was going to be my exit. All of it was planned out, top to bottom,” Greene said.
Greene added that her life has been turned upside-down since she said, “F*** it, I quit” on the air.
“I wasn't expecting that to be, like, the F-bomb heard ‘round the world or anything like that,” Greene said last October.
In a statement the day after Greene quit, KTVA News Director Bert Rudman said, “[Greene] had a personal and business stake in the issue she was reporting, but did not disclose that interest to us. This betrayed the basic bedrock of responsible journalism.”
Regardless of the criticism over her viral resignation, Greene said she doesn't regret reporting on the Alaska Cannabis Club without disclosing that she owned it.
“The Alaska Cannabis Club is my business,” Greene said in October. “I have a degree in journalism. I know all about ethics. I made a choice, and I'm unapologetic in it.”
When asked how she makes money through the Alaska Cannabis Club, Greene said, “You could talk to my attorney about that.”
After the new marijuana laws went into effect in Alaska on Feb. 24, Greene said she successfully opened the Alaska’s first and only medical marijuana dispensary, named the Alaska Cannabis Club, that same day.
Greene said she uses marijuana regularly and credits it with saving her life.
“[With] every single reporting job, I have probably smoked right after I got off work daily," she said in October. "I'm trusted to give you information. The fact that you don't know I smoke weed doesn't make that information any less viable.”
While she doesn’t have any detailed plans for the future, Greene said she will continue to tell her story and support marijuana legalization.
“I mean, I'm not even worried about [the job offers]. I'm set. I'm good,” Greene said in October.
“People believe in me because I took a stand.”