Metro

Scarsdale woman busted for massive pot-growing operation in Queens

Mary-Louise Parker in a publicity illustration for her Showtime Networks series “Weeds.” (REUTERS)

IMG-20130520-00048185159--300x300.jpg

(AP)

Taking a page right out of the Showtime hit “Weeds,” a blond, equestrian mom living with her daughters in an exclusive Scarsdale enclave doubled as the cultivator of a $3 million marijuana-growing empire, authorities said.

Mom-of-three Andrea Sanderlin, 45, would routinely drive her gray Mercedes SUV from her mansion in the tony Westchester suburb to check on her massive pot crops at a warehouse in Queens, according to Brooklyn federal court documents.

It just goes to show “you never know who your neighbor could be,’’ a law-enforcement source quipped.

Sanderlin — a regular at the horse-riding academy Twin Lakes Farm in ultra-exclusive neighboring Bronxville — had previously helped run one grow-house at 420 Tiffany St. in The Bronx, officials said.

The street number is pronounced “4-20’’ by potheads — and a nickname for ganja.

The pretty pot-peddler then allegedly amassed a mother lode of marijuan-growing paraphernalia — special lights, hydroponic watering systems and choice seeds — for her illicit operation in Maspeth, Queens.

The Virginia native cultivated 2,800 plants there, racking up suspicious Con Ed bills of $9,000 a month, which she typically paid in cash, the feds said.

While she told acquaintances she was an interior designer or baby-furniture saleswoman, a law-enforcement source said she was more along the lines of the quirky main character in the Showtime hit “Weeds.’’

On the show, sexy, unassuming, widowed mom Nancy Botwin, played by actress Mary Louise Parker, deals pot to keep her family afloat.

“Hiding behind normalcy, drug traffickers — and those who oversee drug-trafficking organizations — are regular folks, like moms, dads, aunts, etc., trying to earn an illegal income,’’ noted DEA Agent Erin Mulvey.

The twice-divorced Sanderlin —who once tooled around in a gray Maserati — came on the feds’ radar after a pot-ring bust in April involving fellow Scarsdale resident and longtime pal Stephen Haberstroh, authorities said.

Another friend of Sanderlin’s, Jacques Coupet of Forest Hills, Queens, also was arrested.

On his Facebook, Coupet links to the page for the pro-pot group Marijuana Majority and as recently as Monday was posting updates on the medical-marijuana bill currently in Congress.

A third suspect from the case turned rat and started talking about “Andi,’’ according to court papers.

Authorities began tailing Sanderlin and discovered that in between tending to her two young daughters, Harlow, 3, and Zoe, 13, she was meticulously addressing the day-to-day needs of her illicit business, officials said.

She read up on the latest in money-laundering and pot-growing, said the feds, who allegedly found books on both subjects in her home along with about $6,000 in cash.

Working through a front company called “Fantastic Enterprises,’’ Sanderlin made trips to a Brooklyn garden center and plunked down large amounts of cash on “items that could be used in a marijuana grow house,’’ court documents charge.

She would then turn around and give her fellow traffickers “marijuana seedling plants and large amounts of cash’’ that she kept at home, the feds said.

At one point, the feds grabbed her nanny as the woman left Sanderlin’s rented four-bedroom, five-bath, 5,438-square-foot home on Saxon Woods Road and allegedly discovered wads of cash totalling $7,900 and wrapped in rubber bands in her brown leather purse.

The longtime nanny told the feds that Sanderlin’s boyfriend had called and asked her to go to a closet in the home and grab as much dough as she could and bring it to him, the papers state.

The nanny told the Web site thesmokinggun.com, that Sanderlin “kept to herself and didn’t share much with me.”

“I just know that she told me she was going to work in the morning,’’ the woman said.

On the day of Sanderlin’s arrest at the Queens warehouse two weeks ago, cops swarmed the site as the suspect pulled up in her 2010 Mercedes after 8 a.m., sneighbor Anthony Flores, 33, told The Post.

“They had the ATF and the DEA out front and everything. It was crazy. She didn’t want to get out of her car,’’ he said.

When she finally did, “She was quiet, she put her head down.”

Flores said Sanderlin once told him “they were offering baby furniture.’’

He said she’d been working out of the site for four years and that in the past six months, he’d noticed unmarked cars.

“It got to the point where there was no parking on the block,” he said.

Another neighbor, Nuria Solis, 49, said she’d been smelling the pot there since December.

“We smelled some really strong odor. We though it was a raccoon,’’ she said. “We realized it was marijuana. But we thought it was just kids smoking down the block.

“She was a real nice-looking lady. She would always say hi in the morning,” Solis added.

In addition to being a friendly neighbor, by all accounts, Sanderlin was also a good mom.

Her daughter, Zoe, posted a gushing Facebook note to her mom on Mother’s Day, about a week before her arrest, saying, “Happy mothers day Andrea Sanderlin I love you so much! You always do everything for me and Harlow, and I am so happy and lucky we have a mom like you to take care of us.’’

Sanderlin also has a 27-year-old son, Jason, from her first marriage at age 16. He lives in Brooklyn and has been arrested twice for pot possession. He has no phone listed.

Sanderlin shared her love of horses with Zoe, also a rider.

Scott Tarter, owner of Twin Lakes, told The Post that Sanderlin first started riding there about eight months ago and saddled up four or five times a week.

In her first competition in March, she won several ribbons.

She owned a large black Fresian horse but sold it for more than $9,000 last month, he said.

She had been shopping around for a new Hunter jumping horse, Tarter said.

“She seemed like a nice lady,’’ the owner said. “I never saw her drink or smoke. I never saw her act erratic. She paid her bill with a check, so it wasn’t even this weird cash business.

“She said she worked at interior design or something.”

Sanderlin is currently behind bars in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn as her lawyer tries to put together a bail package to spring her.

“She’s holding up,’’ her lawyer, Joel Winograd, told The Post.

“Shes a mother of two young girls, and she’s never been in trouble before, never been arrested, and it’s a big blow.

“She’s a highly intelligent woman who’s a known equestrian,’’ the lawyer said. “She and her daughter are both equestrians in Westchester and Connecticut.

“Our primary objective is to get her out on bail. … It’s not good being in a jail setting, especially if you’ve never been in trouble in your life and you’re a 45-year-old full-time housewife and mother.’’

Sanderlin faces a minimum 10-year prison sentence if convicted on the felony drug raps.

“Weeds’’ creator Jenji Kohan, 43, quipped to The Post yesterday, “It’s tough being a stay-at-home mom — you have to make ends meet.’’

She added that she supports the legalization of pot and called Sanderlin’s bust “a bummer.’’

Sanderlin’s Scarsdale landlord described the suspect as “so quiet a person’’ who kept to herself and “never argued with anyone.’’

But another neighbor said she began getting suspicious that something was afoot after undercover agents began parking at both ends of the street for weeks before the raid.

“They wouldn’t tell us why they were here,” she told The Post.

“I think that’s pretty awful. She has two children. There are plenty of ways to make money,” said the neighbor, who didn’t want to give her name.”’

Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese, Laurel Babcock, Kenneth Garger and Jennifer Bain