Canada - Investigative series: Chinese gang involvement in fentanyl trafficking

[S.J.B.]

An introduction to Fentanyl: Making a Killing
Stewart Bell, Sam Cooper, Andrew Russell
Global News
November 26th, 2018

Almost a dozen Canadians died every day from opioid overdoses last year. Since 2016, more than 8,000 have lost their lives, primarily to fentanyl. In British Columbia, the problem has become so bad that life expectancy has dropped for the first time in decades.

But it has also made traffickers astoundingly rich.

In a multi-part investigative series, Global News follows the money, revealing how organized crime groups and small-time operators alike are making a killing from fentanyl.

The amounts traffickers are bringing in are so vast that investigators suspect their money-laundering has disrupted the Vancouver-area housing market. It has also putting a spotlight on casinos. But when police seize their illicit cash, traffickers just walk away, seemingly unfazed.

Who are these people?

Read the full story here.

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Secret police study finds crime networks could have laundered over $1B through Vancouver homes in 2016
Sam Cooper, Stewart Bell, Andrew Russell
Global News
November 26th, 2018

The stately $17-million mansion owned by a suspected fentanyl importer is at the end of a gated driveway on one of the priciest streets in Shaughnessy, Vancouver's most exclusive neighbourhood.

A block away is a $22-million gabled manor that police have linked to a high-stakes gambler and property developer with suspected ties to the Chinese police services.

Both mansions appear on a list of more than $1-billion worth of Vancouver-area property transactions in 2016 that a confidential police intelligence study has linked to Chinese organized crime.

The study of more than 1,200 luxury real estate purchases in B.C.'s Lower Mainland in 2016 found that more than 10 per cent were tied to buyers with criminal records. And 95 per cent of those transactions were believed by police intelligence to be linked to Chinese crime networks.

The study findings, obtained by Global News, are a startling look at what police believe to be the massive money laundering occurring in the Vancouver-area real estate market.

Read the full story here.

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Fentanyl kings in Canada allegedly linked to powerful Chinese gang, the Big Circle Boys
Sam Cooper, Stewart Bell, Andrew Russell
Global News
November 27th, 2018

In October 2015, RCMP officers wearing tactical gear burst into luxury homes, an underground bank and two illegal casinos in Richmond, B.C.

At a hidden casino on Richmond's No. 4 Road, they found 27 surveillance cameras. The place was abandoned but police saw something that concerned them.

On a wall calendar, a day had been circled. It was the execution date for the RCMP's search warrant.

...

A Global News investigation has found that in British Columbia, where the crisis has hit hardest, investigators believe the fentanyl trade revolves around the Big Circle Boys, a powerful crime network directed from the Chinese mainland.

What makes them so robust, according to sources, is their ability to corrupt Chinese officials, which allows them to control chemical factories in southern China and get fentanyl through Chinese customs and to the West.

Read the full story here.

 

[S.J.B.]

This is an in-depth look at the activity of Chinese organized crime in the Vancouver area. It seems that an astounding amount of money is being laundered through real estate and casinos there.

 

[Gorillaboy21]

Good post

 

[S.J.B.]

'It's murder': How lethal opioids devastated a small region of Ontario
Andrew Russell, Stewart Bell, Sam Cooper
Global News
November 28th, 2018

...Simcoe County and the cities of Orillia and Barrie are made up of quiet neighbourhoods of Victorian homes with country roads linking to small downtown areas that blend local businesses with big box stores and chain restaurants. Long, scenic sections of the Niagara Escarpment run through western parts of the county that turn golden in the fall.

But the Simcoe-Muskoka area of Ontario has been devastated by powerful opioids like illicit fentanyl and carfentanil, where the overdose rate is significantly higher than the provincial average.

In 2017, the area saw the rate of emergency hospital visits for overdoses rise to 77.1 visits per 100,000 people, compared to a provincial rate of 54.6 visits, according to Public Health Ontario.

Between 2013 and 2017, deaths more than doubled to 81 a year.

When it comes to the people profiting off of fentanyl, detectives across Ontario have described how traffickers can vary from a single person ranging in age from 20 to 60, to a small-scale business, or large-scale criminal organizations, including Asian crime groups, Italian Mafia, biker gangs and even connections to cartels in Mexico.

Read the full story here.

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High-roller targeted in RCMP's probe of alleged 'transnational drug trafficking' ring
Sam Cooper, Stewart Bell, Andrew Russell
Global News
November 29th, 2018

On a country road in British Columbia's Chilliwack Valley, a Chinese VIP gambler has spent years constructing a compound of incredible wealth, according to witnesses and sources with access to police intelligence.

If it was in Colombia or Mexico, the secluded five-acre property on Chadsey Road might pass for the set of a Netflix narcos drama.

There are neat rows of Maples and landscaped gardens, a large pond dissected by a floating walkway to an island as big as a putting green, and paved roads that wind between a massive French-style mansion, an equally massive warehouse and, in a far corner of the farm acreage, a barn.

No expense was spared in constructing the compound buildings, according to sources, and it is estimated the buildings store tens of millions of dollars worth of luxury cars, art and weapons.

The VIP who built the Chilliwack compound, and is related to the woman who owns it, according to B.C. property records, is 56-year-old Rongxiang "Tiger" Yuan.

Read the full story here.