Bud-Zotic Raided a Third Time: Password Doors, Untested Weed and a Bronx Grow House

Three raids. Same address. Well over 1,500 pounds of product seized in the last two raids alone, nine months apart.

On Monday, May 18, 2026, the Sheriff's Office Joint Compliance Taskforce, working with Homeland Security Investigations, hit Bud-Zotic at 516 Timpson Place for the third time. Deputies pulled more than 500 pounds of marijuana products and THC vape pens from the store and more than 300 pounds of cannabis products from a van. Two people were arrested.

Nearly three months later, the story is worth revisiting, because it's the clearest example in the borough of what the unlicensed market actually looks like once you get past the storefront: repeat business, hidden entrances and product nobody has tested.

The Bud-Zotic file: three raids in two years

The history of the address, raid by raid:

August 2025: the password door

The August 2025 raid is the one people remember. The operation had previously been shut down during the city's smoke-shop crackdown, then reopened next door, using an adjacent building for sales while keeping the original location for storage. Getting inside required an elaborate password.

The seizure list read less like a corner store and more like a warehouse: about 1,100 pounds of cannabis flower, 71 pounds of THC vapes, 18 pounds of concentrate, 90 pounds of edibles, plus suspected crystal methamphetamine, an imitation pistol and $21,000 in cash. The Sheriff's Office worked alongside NYPD Bronx Narcotics, the FDNY and the Department of Buildings. Eleven people were arrested.

May 2026: round three

Nine months later, investigators were back. The May raid produced two arrests: a driver operating without a valid license and a person with two open warrants. A closure notice said the products were “neither tested nor approved by the Food and Drug Administration,” and that the business had no license to manufacture cannabis products. The property also sits too close to a school, house of worship or youth facility to qualify for a license in any case.

A password on the door is not a vibe. It is a business telling you, in advance, that it knows what it is doing is illegal.

Why "untested" should worry you

This is the part that matters for the person buying, not the person selling.

Every product on a licensed New York shelf carries the state's universal cannabis symbol and a QR code that links to lab results, often called a certificate of analysis. That lab report is the only way an ordinary buyer can know what's in a jar or cartridge: how much THC, and whether it was screened for contaminants.

At a shop like Bud-Zotic, none of that exists. The closure notice says so directly. That means:

• You can't verify potency. A gummy labeled one strength might be another.
• You can't verify what else is in it. No lab, no screening, no paper trail.
• Vapes are the biggest blind spot. You can't see inside a cartridge, and THC vape pens turned up in this raid, and hundreds of pounds of vapes came out of the Indica Diamond case in Pelham Gardens in June.
• There's no one to call. A licensed store has a license number, an address on the state list and a regulator. A password door has none of those.

If you're buying for the first time, our guide to buying legal weed in the Bronx shows you how to scan a package and read its lab results.

Meanwhile, on Pelham Parkway: the grow house nobody knew about

Six days before the third Bud-Zotic raid, a very different kind of discovery surfaced across the borough. On May 12, 2026, a city marshal arriving to carry out an eviction at 750 Pelham Parkway South found a five-room hydroponic grow operation with roughly 299 plants. The power had been illegally rewired. Authorities removed about 300 pounds of plants and 147 pounds of flower. No arrests were announced.

The detail to sit with is the wiring. Grow lights, fans and pumps draw serious electricity, and a setup that bypasses a building's electrical system doesn't only put the grower at risk. It puts every neighbor on the other side of the wall at risk of a fire nobody planned for. The Pelham Parkway find came to light only because of an eviction, not a tip or an inspection.

Licensed cultivation in New York happens on regulated farms and facilities run by hundreds of state-licensed growers, and their products are lab-tested before they reach a licensed shelf. Home growing is legal too, within limits: three mature and three immature plants per adult, capped at six and six per household. A five-room commercial grow in an apartment is not that.

Where to buy legal weed in the South Bronx instead

Here's the thing that has changed since the first Timpson Place bust: the South Bronx now has several licensed stores, all verifiable on the state's Dispensary Location Verification tool. State licensing records list these in and near the South Bronx:

If you want legal weed in the South Bronx, Buddiez, which sponsors the Free Press, sits between East 152nd and 153rd streets, about three blocks north of the 2/5 at 3 Av–149 St, and takes online orders for in-store pickup. Four of the five stores above hold CAURD licenses, the equity license reserved for people with past cannabis convictions and their families. Buying there keeps money in a legal, taxed system that funds community reinvestment, instead of an operation that has now been raided three times.

Prefer not to leave the house? Our Bronx delivery hub lists which licensed stores deliver, and how to confirm a driver is legit. And our full Bronx dispensary map covers all 23 licensed stores in the borough.

Wherever you buy: you must be 21 or older, keep it off the street corner and out of parks, don't drive high, and if it's an edible, start low and go slow. Our rundown of where you can legally smoke has the details.

What we're watching

• Whether 516 Timpson Place stays closed. Three raids suggest seals and arrests alone haven't ended the operation. A fourth would say a lot about what isn't working.
• Who's running the raids. The Joint Compliance Taskforce operates under the Sheriff's Office, which changed leadership this summer. We covered that shift in our report on the new sheriff.
• More hidden grows. The Pelham Parkway operation was found by accident. If you smell a grow, notice unusual electrical work, or hear constant fans in a residential building, that's a safety issue worth reporting.