140 pounds of pot seized from Apex storage unit; NC, CA men charged | News & Observer

An Apex man and one from California have Wake County court dates next week on charges that 140 pounds of marijuana seized from an Apex storage building was theirs.

Search warrants returned to the Wake County court clerk’s office Friday afternoon state that Charles Linwood Farrior, 42, of Apex and Ahmed Siar Bakhtary, 27, of Hayward, Calif., were the people responsible for seven suitcases containing marijuana.

Police found the pot in the rented storage unit at 2110 Ten Ten Road on Dec. 22, using a search warrant issued by a Superior Court judge after officers had followed the men there from a house at 1303 Center St.

Detective C.L. Burns said in applying for the warrant that he had stopped a red pickup truck in which Farrior and Bakhtary were riding when they left a building where the storage unit is located.

Bakhtary had $10,000 in cash in what Burns described as a book bag. Farrior had $1,500, the search warrant said.

Police brought a drug-sniffing dog to the storage building, and the dog indicated it smelled something in the unit that Burns asked permission to search.

Burns told the judge, A. Graham Shirley, that police had been given information the two men were storing a large quantity of marijuana and that Bakhtary “has been stopped by TSA [U.S. Transportation Security Administration] at RDU airport with large amounts of cash in the past.”

Bakhtary frequently traveled between California and the Triangle, Burns said.

Farrior has a record of drug convictions in North Carolina, He served 25 months in prison after being convicted of marijuana trafficking in 2010 in Alamance County.

Farrior has other misdemeanor and felony drug convictions in Durham County going back to 1998, state records show, and was convicted in Wake County in 2003 and 2013.

The men were arrested separately Dec. 22, and each was held through the holidays in lieu of $750,000 bail.

They are both due for court appearances Jan. 10 on charges of trafficking in marijuana and maintaining a place for drug storage.