Nine years after two Vancouver Island men smuggled 30 kilograms of cocaine into B.C. on a yacht, the provincial government is going after assets of others involved in their criminal organization.
The RCMP’s federal serious and organized crime unit announced Monday that additional civil forfeiture proceedings are in the works, but would not confirm the targets.
Already, one Vancouver Island man who was part of the crime group has been ordered to forfeit just over $2 million cash and a Nanaimo property for his role in the operation.
Serious crime unit Cpl. Arash Seyed said the lengthy multi-agency investigation showed the reach of the Vancouver Island criminal organization with tentacles in several countries around the globe.
The Mounties first arrested Joseph Thomas and Bradley Wise in September 2014 about 50 kilometres north of Tofino after “reports of suspicious circumstances surrounding the MV Cedar Spirit off the Estevan Lighthouse.”
The cocaine was found on board. The men were released as the investigation continued.
Thomas later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three and a half years. An outstanding warrant remains for Wise on the B.C. charges, although the Penticton native was later arrested in the U.S. and pleaded guilty to other drug charges. He is serving a 15-year sentence.
According to his U.S. plea agreement, Wise “conspired with others in Canada and elsewhere to transport cocaine by sea from South America and Mexico to Canada for distribution.”
One sailboat he arranged was intercepted northwest of Aruba in the Caribbean with more than 200 kilograms of cocaine on board. The skipper, Canadian Simon Peter Danielson, was alleged to have offloaded another 400 kilos of drugs prior to his arrest. He was later sentenced in Florida to 10 years and transferred to a Canadian prison a year ago.
Wise was finally arrested with Emerson Rome on a sailing vessel near Washington state en route to Vancouver Island. Their boat contained 200 kilograms of methamphetamine, and 50 kilograms of cocaine.
As police approached the pair, “Wise and Rome set the vessel ablaze, before jumping into the ocean.”
They were each sentenced to 30 months for the fire, but got lengthier U.S. terms for drug smuggling.
Seyed said the RCMP criminal probe “continued to expand, and eventually developed into a large-scale transnational organized crime investigation, spanning across multiple jurisdictions within Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and South America.”
“Quickly growing in scale and complexity, the joint force international investigation included 12 wiretap authorizations, and over 500 other judicial authorizations necessary for gathering evidence from deep inside the sophisticated and heavily insulated criminal network, which included the decryption of previously impenetrable PGP encrypted devices.”
He said the investigation has led to “the disruption and dismantling of numerous criminal networks across a number of international jurisdictions.”
Highlights include the arrest and return to Canada of escaped killer Norman Gilbert Riel, who was found in Peru, the seizure of various amounts of cocaine, fentanyl, MDMA and heroin in Fort St. John, Nanaimo, Surrey, the Sumas border crossing, and Post Falls, Idaho,
Hundreds of kilograms of cocaine was also intercepted near the Galapagos Islands on a vessel being piloted by two other Canadians.
“The majority of this project is now concluded,” Seyed said, adding that “further assets, cash and properties associated to the criminal networks are still in the court process with the B.C. Civil Forfeiture Office and cannot be commented on further.”
Acting Insp. Glen Breckon, the serious crime unit’s major projects operations officer on Vancouver Island, said the officers “are specially trained in conducting highly complex and long-term transnational criminal investigations.”
“The success of this, and its associated investigations, demonstrate our steadfast commitment to aggressively pursuing organized crime networks within, and beyond our borders.”
