Man charged with selling illegal THC cartridges for vape pens

WEST JORDAN – Police in West Jordan have busted a man for reportedly selling illegal THC cartridges, and they say he used a popular social media app to do it.

The cartridges are packed with the kind of THC that is designed to make people high.  They might be legal in other states that allow recreational marijuana, however, West Jordan Police Sergeant J.C. Holt says, “It definitely does not comply with our state law, even with the changes in the laws.”

Investigators say they’ve been looking into Juan Cruz Castruita for about six months.  They got word he was using social media to sell the THC.

“He was utilizing SnapChat to distribute the product as well as to recruit people to distribute his product,” Holt says, adding they found videos showing the cartridges with Castruita telling people they were for sale.

Holt says Castruita didn’t want to store the cartridges in his home, so, he stashed them in Utah County

“The product that we featured on our Facebook page that we seized after the search warrant was actually seized from an apartment in American Fork,” Holt says.

There, police found 1200 cartridges, worth roughly $30 thousand.

Holt says, “If you were to break it down by the mount of hits, or puffs you would get off a vape pen, it’s over a million hits.”

Officers also found $57 thousand in cash.