Today's Blind Items - The Groves - Reader Blind

This California company is one of the richest in the nation in terms of what they control. It began almost two centuries ago as an agricultural empire built by a pair of immigrants, but today they are mainly in real estate. The reason they got so rich? They never stopped owning the land underneath all the homes and office towers that got built on top of the farmland. Three entire cities sit on this land and pay rent to them.

But they never stopped growing a certain crop. One which has long been controlled and used by certain cartels as a means of smuggling things. When the last open pieces of land were built upon, they made sure this crop wasn’t touched.

One of the cities that sits on this company’s land is often voted among the safest in the nation. BS. They find bodies in the groves every now and then, and the police are paid off to keep it quiet. When they started building close to the groves, they kicked out any outside building companies and formed their own. The local council of this city has been for the last 40 years a revolving door of the same players, led by a local politician whose higher ambitions have always been derailed by his own corruption. Nonetheless, you don’t stay in local politics long there without his stamp of approval.