Mack Reed, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, was having a solar technician survey his property ahead of installing solar panels on his roof when the discovery was made. Reed told the technician about the unused in-ground hot tub in his backyard, and when they lifted the hatch to the vault, there the duffel bag was.

“Thousands of dense little marijuana buds stare back at me, through industrial vacuum-sealed plastic, through thick Ziploc bags, through the crystal-argyle pattern of glass jelly-jars — all labeled in looping Sharpie letters with names like ‘Lemon Haze’ and ‘Bubble Mix,’” Reed wrote.

Suddenly, fear washed over him as the gravity of the situation sank in.

“Oh. My. God. Someone’s coming back for this,” Reed wrote. “Some evil bastard has stuffed a bag of dope into a hole behind my house and turned my life into the backdrop of a James Ellroy noir. Any minute now, some neckless mook with steroidal shoulders and a bullet-shattered voicebox will stalk up behind and beat me bloody with his pearl-handled Desert Eagle .45.”

Reed called the police to report the dope find, but it took longer than an hour and a half for a sergeant to show up at his door. Cops surveyed the contraband, packed it up in a police vehicle, and left, the Los Angeles Times reported.

After the drugs were gone, a cautious Reed left a note on the hot tub hatch door for the owner of the pot.

“We stumbled across it, and called LAPD. They confiscated it and are now watching the place. Sorry,” read the note, accompanied with a photo Reed took of police surveying the drugs in his backyard.

Shocking marijuana discoveries in homes seem to be a dime a dozen lately. Recently, a family from Utah began getting sick after renting out a beautiful suburban home in Cypress, Texas. That’s when they found out that the home previously was used for a massive marijuana grow operation. And a California house fire earlier this year revealed a huge pot operation inside. Because you just never know: If you’re worried that your neighbors might be running a hidden marijuana operation, here’s how to find out.

This article originally appeared on AOL Real Estate: Mack Reed Finds $175,000 Marijuana Stash Under His Hot Tub in Los Angeles

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