A 20-year-old Michigan woman appeared in federal court Wednesday, accused of being part of a large marijuana-growing operation that used the Internet to sell seeds around the world, all based from a Hamilton Lake home.

Laura Allece Wass was indicted this month by a federal grand jury in Fort Wayne, along with Jesse Groth, 29, also of Michigan. They face two counts each – possession of more than 100 marijuana plants and maintaining a common nuisance. Groth remains in the Newago County Jail in Michigan.

While the federal indictment sheds little light on the activities of the two, parallel state charges filed in Steuben County Superior Court against Wass detail some of the case, as does a recently unsealed federal search warrant.

Wass was arrested this month on two local charges, also possessing marijuana and maintaining a common nuisance.

According to court documents, the two were shipping a variety of marijuana seeds around the country and to other countries through their business "Elite Genetics." They lived in a home on Hamilton Lake.

Their activities came to light in early June when a woman from another state e-mailed the Ashley Police Department saying her teenage son had stolen several hundred dollars from her and admitted he had sent the money to a marijuana-seed operation in Indiana.

The woman searched her son’s computer and found evidence of e-mail communications with Elite Genetics that directed her son to mail payments to Laura Wass on Hamilton Lake, according to court documents. Undercover investigators established an e-mail address and began communicating with Elite Genetics about buying marijuana seeds.

Around the same time, in a separate investigation, U.S. Postal Service inspectors contacted the Hamilton Police Department regarding Groth. He was a fugitive, having skipped out on a 2006 sentencing on federal wire fraud charges.

Groth had been charged with bilking eBay buyers out of thousands of dollars, not sending them sports cards they had bought. He was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison on two of the counts and ordered to pay $20,788 in restitution, according to court documents.

Postal inspectors believed Groth was in the Hamilton area, and the address they gave local police was the same one under investigation in the marijuana-seed case, according to court documents.

On July 14, federal, state and local law enforcement served a search warrant at the Hamilton Lake home – seizing computers, cash, fluorescent lights, envelopes, seeding heat mats and numerous seeds, according to court documents.

The Elite Genetics Web site was still active Wednesday, offering dozens of varieties of marijuana seeds.

A detention hearing has been set for next week for Wass and Groth.

If convicted, each could serve up to 40 years in prison and be required to pay hundreds of thousands in fines, according to court documents.

rgreen@jg.net