SANDPOINT — A Sandpoint real estate agent and the director of a local theater troupe have been implicated on felony marijuana charges in Connecticut.

Travis Buck Engle and Errol Dixon Clark are each charged with one count of selling more than a kilogram of the drug and one count of conspiracy to commit said transaction, according to documents filed in the Litchfield Judicial District. Engle, 38, and Clark, 50, were arrested following a sting operation conducted by the Connecticut Statewide Narcotics Task Force on Nov. 11 in New Hartford, according to a news report published by the Republican-American newspaper in Waterbury.

The takedown was described as one of the largest marijuana busts in the state’s northwest corner.

During his arrest, Clark said he was delivering coffee for a friend, but a drug-detecting canine alerted to contraband in Clark’s Dodge Durango.

A search of the sport utility vehicle yielded 130 pounds of shrink-wrapped marijuana and several pounds of extract of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, the paper reported.

Authorities alleged that Engle and Clark arrived at a prearranged location with a known buyer, who exchanged legitimate currency bundled around of mass of fake money used in movie productions, according to the Republican-American’s report.

A search of Engle’s rented Kia turned up the prop money, in addition to $117,000 in legitimate currency that Engle reportedly buried near the Avon/Bloomfield town line during a previous drug deal and had recently been unearthed. The paper reported that Engle buried the money after being unable to find a way to deposit it into an overseas bank account without arousing suspicions about its provenance.

Clark is described in the reporting as a delivery driver who was paid by the pound in marijuana to transport the drugs and facilitate drug deals.

Engle, meanwhile, comes off as the operation’s supplier. Engle apparently told authorities that he’d been living as an expatriate in Spain for several years before returning to the states, where he began renting an Oregon farm to cultivate marijuana for the medical market. When his cultivator’s license expired, Engle allegedly pivoted to the ready underground markets on the East Coast, the Republican-American reported.

The pair was arraigned in Torrington Superior Court on Nov. 13 and bail was set at $500,000 each, according to the newspaper report.

Clark is being held at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional institution in Suffield, according to the Connecticut State Department of Correction’s website. Engle is not listed as an inmate at any of the state’s facilities, which may indicate he was able to post bail.

Both men are due back in court on Nov. 27, according to court documents.

It emerged during a hearing in which bail was discussed that Engle has a bachelor’s degree from Vermont College studied at the vaunted Julliard School, according to the Republican-American’s report. Engle is the director of Bio-Luminesce, and biofuel- and fire-inspired theater troupe, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Clark, meanwhile, has been licensed to seal real estate in Idaho since 2013, according to the Idaho State Real Estate Commission’s website.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.