Charges Say Stillwater Man Was Shipped Pot Inside Stereo Speakers

A Stillwater man faces charges related to receiving nearly 90 pounds of marijuana packed into stereo speakers inside a crate that was too big to fit into the truck he rented, prosecutors allege. Joshua Lowell Volkman, 22, faces two counts of controlled-substance crime in a criminal complaint filed recently in Dakota County. 

According to the complaint: 

A shipping company reported on May 2, 2013 they had a suspicious crate containing marijuana addressed to Volkman with a Farmington address. Homeland Security investigators found the crate contained 87 individual vacuum-sealed packages of what tested to be marijuana.  

Five days later a Homeland Security investigator posing as an employee of the shipping company called Volkman. The defendant said he was expecting a crate but was only picking it up on behalf of a friend and would do so the next day. 

On May 8, a Homeland Security agent acting as an employee of the shipping company called Volkman to let him know the crate was ready to be picked up. Volkman said he would rent a truck. Homeland Security observed Volkman drive with another man from a Bloomington hotel to a truck rental office.

An hour later Volkman called the Homeland Security agent posing as an employee of the shipping company to say he was still trying to find a truck to rent and would be late to pick up the crate. Agents observed Volkman and the second man arrive at another truck-rental business. Volkman left in a rental truck with the second man following in a car. 

At the shipping company's office in Farmington, shipping company workers were unable to fit the crate into the rear of the truck. Volkman and the second man asked the workers to take out stereo speakers (in which the marijuana was concealed), leaving the crate itself behind. 

Volkman and the second man stopped back at the hotel, then drove in the truck to Stillwater, where they met a third person at a restaurant, staying for about 90 minutes. Volkman and the second man then stopped at a hardware store then drove back to the Bloomington hotel, where they put a padlock on the rear door of the truck. 

That evening, Volkman was arrested at a residence where he had driven in a car. 

Investigators found slightly more than 86 pounds of marijuana—approximately 39,009 grams or 39 kilograms, with a street value of about $180,600.