Shroom House owner, manager appear in court after police raid shop

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - If you drove by Shroom House on West Burnside last week, you may have noticed lines that wrapped around the building.

“We ended up standing in line for five hours, I know. We were like going to leave but after two hours we were like, ‘Okay, well, we’re kind of committed to the process at this point,’” said Randi King.

Now, the business is shuttered after Portland Police raided the shop and found $13,000 in cash and 22.1 pounds of psilocybin.

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Customers who bought magic mushrooms last week said they’re not surprised they were shut down.

“It was kind of inevitable,” King said.

The store owner, 32-year-old Steven Tachie, and the 42-year-old manager Jeramiahs Geronimo were arrested early Thursday morning. They each face charges for 20 counts of money laundering and delivery of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a school.

They made their first appearance in court on Friday and their bail was set at $1.5 million. Geronimo pleaded not guilty and Tachie hasn’t yet entered a plea. Tachie’s lawyer said he didn’t know they were selling illegal drugs in the first place.

“My understanding is that the store sold mushroom supplements that were like vitamins, the equivalent of vitamins and it’s to the extent that there were sales of psychoactive mushrooms that it wasn’t something that, to this defendant’s knowledge, was going on,” Tachie’s lawyer said.

It’s the legality of the business that brought so much attention to it. Voters passed Measure 109 in 2020 to allow the use of psilocybin in a licensed medical facility starting after the new year, but the Oregon Health Authority has not given out licenses for the service yet. It’s also not legal to sell or use these types of mushrooms recreationally.

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King said her wife had to provide two forms of ID to buy from the store, but said she’s not worried about any penalties considering the sheer number of customers they had.

“I don’t imagine there’s going to be a lot of follow up with the people who were in line,” she said. “I think they probably apprehended the people they wanted to and we’ll move on from there.”

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