MILWAUKEE (WITI) —Back in Milwaukee, a man from Whitefish Bay named Ed Patterson said he just wanted to follow in his family’s footsteps. So, early last year, he bought his neighborhood McDonald’s — the same store his father had owned when he was just a boy.

In 2012 the Drug Enforcement Administration started investigating what they would later call the Patterson Drug Trafficking Organization.

Patterson operated three McDonald’s restaurants in Fox Point, Mequon, and Glendale. Federal authorities say he used his fast food empire to launder drug money and conceal his most lucrative business: marijuana.

Patterson and his buddies were arrested last fall, and the criminal complaint that followed shows how he was able to use the United States Postal Service to ship hundreds of thousand of dollars of pot from Mendocino County, California to Wisconsin.

U.S. mail system a “safe” way to ship marijuana?