POLAND – Drug agents arrested a Portland man Friday after raiding a house in Poland and seizing 658 marijuana plants worth an estimated $400,000.

Police said 29-year-old Brian Magnin rented the house at 77 Dunn Road exclusively to grow pot with about $30,000 worth of equipment.

Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office deputies and investigators from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency went to the Dunn Road house Friday morning with a warrant. They said they found 658 marijuana plants in cultivation, roughly eight pounds of processed pot and several ounces of hashish.

Magnin, an amateur musician, was arrested later when police went to his home at 63 Wilson St. in Portland. He was brought back to Auburn where he was booked on charges of cultivating more than 500 marijuana plants, trafficking marijuana and trafficking hashish.

Investigators from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency described the marijuana grow as elaborate. When they went to the Dunn Road house Friday morning, they found that the entire second floor of the two-story house had been transformed into a growing area.

One section of the upstairs was used as a nursery to start new pot plants from clones, which had been cut from host plants to reproduce the species, MDEA Supervisor Gerry Baril said.

In the nursery were 442 plants in small, individual pots filled with soil, illuminated by four high-intensity grow lights. In other sections of the upstairs, a total of 216 marijuana plants in the flowering stage were budding under six high-pressure sodium grow lights.

The advanced lighting system helped lead police to the house. Neighbors had noticed odd occurrences and eventually called police.

“Every window in the house was covered up with rolls of black plastic,” Baril said. “That’s classic. It’s done to prevent light from escaping.”

At the same time, two dormer windows were left open several inches to provide ventilation.

Baril said large plastic tubs filled with water were kept in the rooms to hydrate the plants. Both rooms were equipped with fans to keep the room temperature down. An air purification system was in place to minimize the odor. Carbon dioxide gas was used to enrich the environment to help promote plant development.

Investigators said there was evidence that Magnin kept stereo equipment on in the house, possibly because music is believed by some to spur growth in marijuana plants.

The first floor of the house, Baril said, was used as storage for the numerous plastic pots used to transfer the clones into larger pots. Several large tubs and garbage bags were found filled with used potting soil from prior cultivation cycles.

Baril said there were stacks of boxes storing replacement bulbs, hoods and ballasts for the grow lights, as well as several 50-pound bales of fresh potting soil for future grows.

There were strings running along the ceilings to hang mature and harvested plants to cure plant material before it was weighed and packed in gallon-sized plastic bags for distribution, Baril said.

Six large bags of processed marijuana were found inside the freezer in the kitchen. Baril said seven more bags were found in a five-gallon bucket. A digital scale was used to weigh out the plant material and a food saver was used to seal the plastic bags.

Police also seized equipment used to screen and press the resin from the pot plants into a fine powdered form of hashish known as “KIF,” Baril said. Also seized was a mason jar three-quarters full of hashish.

Baril said the size and elaborate nature of the grow suggested it was a “for-profit” operation. Magnin was first taken to the Cumberland County Jail in Portland and later moved to the jail in Auburn where he remained Friday night.

Magnin, originally from New Jersey, moved to Maine a few years ago. When he rented the house on Dunn Road, he described himself as an unemployed chef. It was not immediately clear whether Magnin was working at the time of his arrest.