Electrical transformers on utility poles are usually good for 40 years.
But the transformer on the pole outside David Ittel’s Chicago Indoor Garden Supply store in Streamwood was removed by Commonwealth Edison this weekend, only four weeks after it was installed.
Its removal Saturday confirmed what Ittel suspected all along:
The cylindrical device, which contained a small window, wasn’t a transformer at all. Rather, it was a hiding place for a surveillance camera.
“It was not a piece of equipment we own,” Dan Kowalewski, an Edison spokesman said Monday. “It was a surveillance transformer. The U.S. attorney’s office asked us to put it up.”
Kowalewski said the utility will cooperate with any law enforcement agency after approval by the company’s legal department.
The Northeastern Metropolitan Enforcement Group, a multi-jurisdictional drug task force, confirmed Monday that Ittel’s store was under investigation. The surveillance camera belonged to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, said Art Martinez, a north area supervisor for the group.
The U.S. attorney’s office and the DEA would not comment.
For Ittel, the removal signals what could be a respite from weeks of intense surveillance by federal and state drug enforcement authorities who apparently are interested in Ittel’s customers.
Ittel, 41, sells hydroponic equipment, products used to grow plants without dirt or natural light. The equipment is legal, but because it also can be used to grow marijuana indoors, businesses that sell it have come under scrutiny by state and federal law enforcement agencies all over the country.
Beer-brewing equipment accounts for the bulk of his business, Ittel said. And if customers even hint that they’re interested in the equipment for marijuana growing, Ittel refuses to serve them and kicks them out of his store, he said.
“I have nothing to hide,” Ittel said, noting that it is a crime to sell the equipment knowing it will be used to grow marijuana.
Ittel admitted that he was convicted for growing marijuana in Franklin County, Indiana, in 1983, and served about a year in prison. But he said he thinks that plays only a small part in the surveillance that his store and his customers have been enduring on and off for the last several months.
“I think it has a lot more to do with my activism in the legalization of marijuana issue,” Ittel said. “And, anybody in this business can expect this treatment.”
Ittel said he advertises his beer-brewing supplies in High Times, a magazine advocating the legalization of marijuana. He suspects that might be another reason for the federal probe.
He says he now brews beer, but longs for a day when growing marijuana will be legal.
“There was a day when brewing beer was illegal, too,” he said.
Harvey M. Silets, Ittel’s lawyer, said a federal investigation was under way, and that his client had cooperated with government requests for store records.
Silets said his client was innocent of any wrongdoing, and he called the investigation “Orwellian.”
“If someone buys a silver spoon, does that mean he’s going to sniff cocaine?” Silets asked. “Any legitimate piece of equipment, in the hands of someone who wants to use it for illegal purposes, can be improperly used. It’s unfair for David to have to tell people `I want you to know you may be followed home.’ “
But he does.
Ittel said he decided to go public with his story after several of his customers who were buying beer-brewing equipment had been followed home and questioned by agents after leaving the store.
“When all these beer-brewing customers started being followed, I had to break this,” he said.
Ittel said he’s had run-ins with federal agents who sit parked outside his store watching who comes and goes. He got in a shoving match with one agent when he took his picture, and one of his customers traced a trailing agent’s car to the Metropolitan Enforcement Group.
It’s all hurting his business, he said.
The transformer was removed about a week after Ittel received media attention.
Ittel has been in business for more than five years and says he’s become one of the largest garden and beer-brewing supply operators in the Midwest.
“They’re putting so much time and effort and money into this,” Ittel said of the investigators. “They’re hurting a lot of innocent people in the process.”
