Scarsdale Marijuana Mom Behind Bars

A 45-year-old Saxon Woods Road mother is being held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after agents raided a Queens warehouse on May 20 and discovered a "sophisticated operation to grow and process marijuana with state-of-the-art lighting, irrigation and ventilation systems." The Drug Enforcement Agency seized 2,800 marijuana plants and large quantities of dried marijuana and charged Scarsdale's Andrea Sanderlin with narcotics trafficking, a felony that carries a minimum 10-year prison term.

At the same time as the warehouse raid, additional agents were parked outside Sanderlin's home in Scarsdale and saw a woman and young child leaving the house in a cab. They followed the cab to a shopping center where the woman dropped off the child and then returned to the house. Police caught the woman leaving the home with a bag filled with $7,900 in bundled cash. She explained that Victor Garcia, Sanderlin's boyfriend and the father of the three-year-old child, had instructed her to go to the house, take as much cash as possible from a closet and take a cab to a bookstore in Yonkers to meet him. Agents then searched the house on Saxon Woods Road and found $6,000 in cash and books on laundering money and growing marijuana.

Agents were tipped off to Sanderlin's activities after the arrest of five men in April for their alleged roles in a marijuana grow business operating from two New York City warehouses. Agents allege that the ring was headed by another Scarsdale resident, 50-year-old Stephen Haberstroh. Haberstroh and Sanderlin were longtime friends who had previously lived together in Queens and Manhattan. Between May 20 and May 27 agents trailed Sanderlin, driving her 2010 Mercedes-Benz SUV to and from the warehouse located at 58-15 57th Drive in Queens on numerous occasions. They were also tipped off to the marijuana plant by Con Edison bills for the facility which were running around $9,000 a month.

Sanderlin is twice divorced, and the mother of a 27-year-old son as well as two daughters, ages 13 and 3. According to the complaint, she previously rented a home at 96 Morris Lane in Scarsdale, a 6,917 square foot house on 2.35 acres that sold in July, 2012 for $4,855,000. It is believed that she also rents her current home at 193 Saxon Woods Road.  Pictured here, it was built in 2009.

Little is known about Sanderlin in Scarsdale. In addition to her business interests she was an avid horseman and a YouTube video of her competiting in an equestrian competition remains online. 

It is interesting to note that in Colorado retail pot stores will soon be legal, so if

Sanderlin lived in Denver, rather than Scarsdale, she would not be facing the prospect of ten years behind bars.

Sanderlin is being represented by attorney Joel Winograd who also defended Steve Madden and Gambino crime-family soldier Michael "Roc" Roccaforte.

The story was broken on TheSmokingGun.com and quickly republished on scores of news websites and picked up on local television channels. Comparisons are being drawn between Sanderlin and the drug-dealing suburban mother played by Mary Louise Parker on the television series Weeds.