To employees of 305 Farms, a large marijuana-growing operation in West Michigan, Darrell “DJ” Howley isn’t just a boss — he’s a modern-day Robin Hood.
When paychecks stopped arriving, leaving workers unable to pay for food, rent, or car loans, Howley made a bold decision as general manager of the corporate farm in Lawrence. Without the company’s knowledge, he sold 665 pounds of recently harvested cannabis on Oct. 18 and used the $269,000 in cash to pay his team what they were owed.
“I didn’t want to do this,” Howely tells Metro Times. “I had to.”
Howley says employees were losing their cars and houses and often couldn’t even afford to eat or pay for gas. The human resources director would collect food from charities so everyone had at least one meal a day, employees say.
Now Howley is the target of a criminal investigation, and his co-workers fear they could be implicated if they don’t return the money.
The co-founder and interim chief executive officer, Jan Verleur, temporarily shut down 305 Farms last week and is hoping prosecutors charge anyone involved in the “theft.”
“We’re working very closely with law enforcement to get this dealt with,” Verleur tells Metro Times. “We’re still very hopeful that we can still retrieve some of the merchandise, so that’s a positive.”
Verleur says he can’t discuss details of the investigation because it’s ongoing, but suggests more than cannabis was taken.
“This is a serious crime, and it goes beyond just product,” Verleur says. “There was money involved as well. … Nothing justifies stealing everything on our shelves. This is cut and dry major embezzlement and grand larceny, among other things.”
Employees say the company told them they would be fired if they didn’t return the money from the sale.
The company sent out an email to customers last week, saying more than $600,000 worth of cannabis was stolen.
305 Farms also owes money to vendors, according to employees.
Even when she wasn’t getting paid, Tracy Morris kept working at the company because she had bladder cancer and needed health insurance, although it lapsed at times.
Now that her cancer is in remission, Morris decided to quit her job as director of facilities last week. She says 305 Farms owes her more than $30,000 in back wages.
She says without notice, 305 Farms stopped paying for employees’ life insurance policies, and because she had an aggressive form of cancer that is likely to return, she can’t get life insurance on her own. Her car was also repossessed because she couldn’t afford to pay her monthly payments.
“My stress levels are through the roof,” Morris tells Metro Times. “I couldn’t morally work for them anymore, so I have to wait for unemployment to start. They left us with nothing. They completely broke me.”
At one point, she says, she went six weeks without pay. As a result, her credit rating plunged from 730 to 489.
Meanwhile, she and others say, Verleur recently used company money to pay $3,000 to his personal housekeeper, while failing to compensate employees.
Earlier this year, a military veteran who worked at 305 Farms was struggling to help raise his son because he wasn’t getting paid. He died in April, and his family never received the $5,000 he was owed, employees say.
Morris says she was interviewed by police and is worried about Howley getting in trouble. She defends Howley, insisting he didn’t steal the weed.
“They’re making it sound like a robbery,” Morris says. “It wasn’t a robbery. It was a legal sale, and the employees got paid. We haven’t seen pay for a long time.”
As general manager, Howley insists he has the authority to make sales. He says he did all of the proper paperwork and followed state-required procedures for making the sale.
“I did nothing but try to do what’s right for me and the people around me,” Howley says. “Why should we suffer because of his poor management skills?”
In July, 14 employees sued the company for allegedly failing to pay them thousands of dollars in wages. At the time, Verleur blamed the situation on a “catastrophic harvest failure” caused by a faulty HVAC system.
Verleur says all of those employees have since been paid.
Workers described 305 Farms as a thankless, bizarre, and sometimes frightening place to work. In text messages obtained by Metro Times, Verleur made alarming and threatening statements to employees.
In a group text, Verleur told employees he was going to “take a shit on everybody’s desk.”
“And I’m taking stool softeners, so it won’t be pretty,” the text read.
In another text about money issues, Verleur suggested “maybe I’ll just bring my AR-15 and my tactical vest, and pay a little visit to [cannabis processor] waypoint…go out in glory mass shooter style.”
305 Farms has been hemorrhaging employees over the past year.
At the beginning of the year, the company had nearly 65 workers. As of last week, the company had a little more than a dozen employees, and some of them have already resigned, according to workers. Although they weren’t getting paid, they say, they were each doing the jobs of several people.
Verleur counters that he still has a good core group of workers who are willing to fight for the company’s survival.
“We’ve been operating like a family of people trying to fix something and prove it can be done,” Verleur says. “That’s why in situations like this, it can be very devastating because a lot of us invested a lot more than just time.”
Jacqueline Morgan, who worked in security for 305 Farms until resigning last week, was on the brink of losing her home to a bank foreclosure because she wasn’t getting paid. She owed less than $15,000 on her house, and 305 Farms owed her about $19,000, she says.
Although she was about to get promoted to manager of administration, security, and facilities, Morgan quit because she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Those of us who were left at the end kept going to make sure our co-workers were OK,” Morgan says. “We were all banding together. We brought food for each other and made meals so our co-workers could eat at least one time a day. … We all loved each other, and we were like family. We fought for each other.”
She says Verleur and his team made the employees believe they were eventually going to get paid.
“They really had us believing in this place,” Morgan says. “Jan would come through and do these heartfelt speeches and was teary-eyed and said we can make it through this.”
Verleur says no one had to work without a check.
“Nobody was forced to work unpaid at the farm,” Verleur says. “We were very transparent.”
In all, Howley estimates the company owed more than $1 million in unpaid wages before his defiant sale.
Employees declined to discuss how much each of them received from the sale.
But one thing is certain, employees say: Howley is a hero.
“I’ve never met a boss like him, a person like him,” Morgan says. “He’s just awesome. He is our Robin Hood. He really is.”
The Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office is investigating but declined to discuss the case.
