A violent Lower Mainland gang was contracting itself out to commit murders for larger, more-established organized crime groups, Vancouver Police Supt. Mike Porteous said Thursday.

But the “Gill group”, headed by 21-year-old Taqdir Gill, has now been dismantled after a months-long investigation that resulted in seven arrests and the seizure of four guns, Porteous said.

“Project Temper, a gang violence suppression operation, has resulted in the dismantling of the Gill group. This violent crime group was comprised of several individuals,” Porteous told reporters. “The VPD is committed to aggressively targeting people who pose the most risk to our communities.”

Gill, Walta Abay, 23, Hitkaran Johal, 19, are all charged with conspiracy to commit murder between Oct. 5 and 27, 2017.

Both Gill and Abay are also charged with possession of a loaded, restricted or prohibited firearm on Oct. 26, and being in a vehicle knowing there was a gun inside.

Porteous said the murder conspiracy involved “several victims” — some of whom were rival gang members.

But a Vancouver businessman with no gang links was also targeted by the group, Porteous said.

None of the victims are listed in court documents obtained by Postmedia.

Porteous said at one time the Gill group was aligned with the Kang faction of Brothers Keepers, which has traditionally been on the Red Scorpion side of a decade-long regional conflict.

But Postmedia has learned that the Gill group had switched allegiances to the United Nations side.

“I would suggest that they were working within a cell themselves, but they were working more on a contract basis for other crime groups or bigger crime groups,” Porteous said.

“The way these gangs are structured … across the region — there’s sort of the Red Scorpion-associated people and on the other side there’s the United Nations-associated people.”

He said smaller groups of upstarts or younger would-be gangsters form their own smaller gangs and align themselves with one side or the other.

Also charged are Simrat Lally and Pawandeep Chopra, both 20, and two youths who were 17 when their alleged offences occurred and therefore cannot be identified.

Lally is facing counts of conspiracy to discharge a firearm and conspiracy to commit arson, as well as two counts of possessing a firearm and one of being in a car containing a gun. Chopra allegedly possessed a loaded or restricted firearm on Oct. 30 in Vancouver. One youth is facing firearms charges while the other is charged with conspiracy to commit arson.

Porteous said the Gill group came to the attention of anti-gang investigators after a series of shootings last August.

“There was a spike in gang violence,” he said. “They were proactively targeted. We used a variety of police methods to gather evidence, including surveillance.”

Because the gang operated across the region, the VPD worked with the anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, Porteous said.

CFSEU Chief Officer Kevin Hackett said the teamwork is “critical” and will continue.

“The coordinated and strategic engagement, disruption, and enforcement efforts that we have collectively undertaken since the start of this joint operation will continue as part of our long-term regional strategy,” Hackett said.

Even young gangsters who are not criminally sophisticated, like those in the Gill group, seem to have easy access to firearms, Porteous said.

“We are seeing more and more weapons on the street. We are close to the border and a lot of stuff comes from across the line,” he said. “They are easily accessing weapons, so it is not that difficult. They are out there on the market for them to purchase.”

Porteous defended anti-gang programs aimed at prevention despite the young ages of those involved in the Gill group.

“There are 19, 20 and 21 year olds conspiring to commit murder, so apparently it wasn’t sinking in for them. But it does work for many others,” Porteous said of programs like End Gang Life.

“The overall education and prevention strategies that the police are using across the region are reducing (gang involvement) at the grassroots level.”

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Family members of two young Victoria sweethearts murdered 31 years ago expressed relief and gratitude Friday after a Washington man was arrested in connection with their brutal slayings.

William Earl Talbott, 55, was picked up as he left his Seattle trucking job Thursday and charged with killing Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, in November 1987.

He is also expected to be charged with murdering Tanya’s boyfriend, Jay Cook, 20, Snohomish County Det. Jim Scharf said Friday.

Cook’s mother, Lee, said she had “waited and hoped for a day like this” ever since Jay and Tanya vanished while on an overnight trip to Seattle. Days later, their bodies were found dumped in neighbouring Washington counties.

“How could we have known that instead the day could be so bittersweet. On one hand, we are closer to closure. And on the other, we are still at a loss and I don’t have my only son Jay,” Lee Cook said after thanking investigators for their dedication to the case.

For Tanya’s brother, John Van Cuylenborg, the arrest has given him “a sense of some justice that is starting to happen here for these two wonderful kids.”

“They deserve justice to be done. They were both gentle souls, caring and trusting kids, and they were betrayed,” he said.

Talbott was identified after a company called Parabon Nanolabs was hired to assist investigators using new DNA technology.

Genetic genealogist CeCe Moore used a public databank to upload the suspect’s DNA and build a family tree from those with partial matches back to Talbott’s great-grandparents.

She then started building the tree forward until “two of the closest matches’ trees converged. They intersected into a marriage, and from that marriage there was only one son.”

“That led us to really only one person who could carry this mix of DNA,” said Moore, who offered her condolences to the families.

Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary said Talbott’s arrest “shows how powerful it can be to combine new DNA technology with the relentless determination of detectives.”

“We never gave up hope that we would find Jay and Tanya’s killer,” he said.

But he said more work needs to be done in the case.

“Skagit and Snohomish county detectives are looking to speak to anyone who knew Talbott or knew of his activities in 1987 or 1988. He would have been 24 years old at the time of the crime and living in Woodenville,” Trenary said.

Police want to know if anyone saw Talbott driving the Cook family’s brown van or in possession of Tanya’s Minolta X700 camera.

Trenary’s voice broke when he described arresting someone after so much time.

“It is a difficult thing for us, but candidly, this is what we do our jobs for,” he said.

Scharf said Talbott refused to talk to investigators when he was arrested. He said the suspect appears to have never married or had a family.

“We don’t have any idea what the motive was here. We are not even sure how the individual met up with our victims,” Scharf said.

Talbott had been arrested before for drugs and possibly indecent exposure, but the cases were dismissed, Scharf said.

Just last month, Snohomish County detectives held a news conference to release composite drawings of a suspect that Parabon had created using DNA markers.

Scharf said the images did not have any impact on the break in the case, which only happened because of the use of the genealogy website.

In April, police in California used the same technique to arrest Joseph James DeAngelo, who is suspected of being the Golden State Killer. Critics complained that law enforcement was potentially invading the privacy of unwitting website users.

But Scharf and the family members of the slain couple defended the investigative technique.

“If it hadn’t been for genetic genealogy, we wouldn’t be standing here today. And if it’s not allowed to be used in law enforcement, we would never have solved his case,” Scharf said.

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TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS IN THE MURDER CASE:

Jay and Tanya left Victoria on Nov. 18, 1987 for what was supposed to be a quick trip to Seattle.

The couple caught the MV Coho ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, arriving at about 5:30 p.m. They missed a turnoff, so stopped at a local grocery store.

They got to Allen, Wash., at about 9:30 p.m. and stopped at a deli there. At 10:16 p.m., they bought a ticket for the Bremerton ferry to Seattle, which would have put them in the city about 11:30 p.m.

The pair had planned to sleep in the van near the former Kingdome stadium. A missing persons report was filed two days later, according to news archives.

Jay’s body was found days later dumped on the side of the road in Snohomish County, covered with a blue blanket. He had been strangled.

On Nov. 24, a man walking on an isolated road near Alger, south of Bellingham in Skagit County, discovered Tanya’s body in a ditch. She had been sexually assaulted and shot in the back of the head with a .38-calibre firearm. She had been restrained with zip-tie-type fasteners.

The following day, her wallet, her ID, keys for the van, a pair of surgical gloves and a partial box of ammunition were found under the back porch of a Bellingham pub. The brown van that Jay and Tanya had been driving was found a block away from the pub, beside the Greyhound bus station, locked and in a parking lot.

A witness told police it had been there since Nov. 21.

Some of the couple’s items were missing — a green backpack and a black men’s jacket, as well as Tanya’s Minolta camera, which has never been found, although its lens turned up at a Portland pawnshop in 1990.

A Vancouver police search of a Yaletown apartment that resulted in the seizure of an illegal AK-47, two Ruger guns, a silencer and ammunition violated the Charter rights of the condo resident, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled.

Justice Heather MacNaughton acquitted Michael John French of several firearms charges after she ruled that the guns could not be used as evidence because the police initially searched his 16th floor unit in May 2014 without a warrant.

The Crown in the case had argued that police had exigent circumstances to go into French’s suite at 1199 Seymour Street because of a call from a neighbour that French had assaulted someone. Officers had also been told that French was suicidal and had sent disturbing text messages to friends.

But MacNaughton noted in her May 16 ruling that French cooperated with police and complied with their request to exit the suite. No officers asked his permission to go inside.

“There was no objective basis for a concern that there was a victim of an assault in the suite. There was also no objective basis to believe that there was a possible assailant in the suite who would present a risk to them,” MacNaughton said.

After an initial walkthrough, the officers found a live round for a .233 calibre firearm on the kitchen floor. They went back in a second time and looked for a gun.

One officer testified that when he searched a closet, “he found a pistol, two magazines loaded with ammunition, and a threaded suppressor, or silencer, which appeared to fit the threaded end of the pistol.”

At that point police placed French under arrest, locked down the suite and went to obtain a search warrant.

They came back the following evening around 10:30 p.m. with the warrant and found the AK-47 and another rifle, plus oversized magazines and ammunition.

MacNaughton said she had no choice but to disallow the firearms into evidence.

“I have concluded that the warrantless search of Mr. French’s residence was unlawful and unreasonable. The initial search violated his rights under Section 8 of the Charter,” she said. “The subsequent warrantless search and the search under warrant were also unlawful, as the grounds for them were undermined by the illegality of the first search.”

Police would not have been able to get a search warrant without the information obtained during the improper search, she said.

She also ruled that police violated French’s rights when they handcuffed him in the hallway after he complied with their request to come out of the apartment.

MacNaughton acknowledged that the charges against French were serious and “that there is a substantial public interest in this case in having them adjudicated on their merits.”

“This is particularly so because Mr. French had the firearms in a residential building in the heart of downtown Vancouver,” she said.

But she sad in the long term, the reputation of the justice system “would be adversely affected by admitting the firearms.”

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read the ruling:

A major Coquitlam fentanyl trafficker, who sold more than 50,000 of the deadly pills in a year, was sentenced Friday to 16 years in prison after pleading guilty to drug and firearms charges.

B.C. Provincial Court Judge Gene Jamieson said Andrew Leach preyed on drug addicts and put his own family at risk by storing fentanyl, hundreds of thousands in cash and firearms inside their Coquitlam home.

“Mr. Leach was engaged as the head of an organization with a long, lucrative history of fentanyl sales,” Jamieson said. “The particularly pernicious nature of the substance at the heart of this operation having been the centre of a persistent and deadly health crisis in the province must be recognized and denounced.”

Leach was captured on wiretap threatening to slit the throat of someone who owed him money and suggesting to an associate that his friend was a “rat” and needed to be shot.

Jamieson said the threats, coupled with Leach’s 2011 conviction for manslaughter, were aggravating factors in his sentencing.

“Such threats are particularly troubling and aggravating in light of his capacity for violence, as shown by his manslaughter conviction arising from stabbing a Hells Angels associate as that person sought to retreat away from Mr. Leach,” he said.

“It is apparent that with access to weapons, his experience in committing a violent offence, together with the temper he exposed in the audio recordings, provide a recipe for danger.”

Federal prosecutor Maggie Loda had argued that a 22-year sentence was appropriate for Leach, while defence lawyer David Milburn had urged a term of eight years be imposed.

He argued that Leach’s early guilty plea, just months after his August 2017 arrest, as well as Leach’s apology to the court, were mitigating factors in his client’s favour.

But Jamieson said the expression of remorse rang hollow when contrasted by some of the comments Leach made during the intercepted conversations.

When the mother of a customer called the dial-a-dope number complaining that her son had gotten sick from Leach’s product, he expressed no concern and commented that they had to change the line’s phone number and the delivery cars.

He also made racist and derogatory comments about his own drug-line workers who were of Persian descent, Jamieson said.

Leach also commented to an associate that he wanted to expand his drug line into Langley, but would need more guns to do so.

“The potential for violence is further enhanced by his comments on the intercepts as to his intention to expand to other places such as Langley and how he anticipates ‘a war’ coming,” Jamieson said. “I also think it is significant that the weapons Mr. Leach possessed were stored in a haphazard manner within his mother’s bedroom closet.”

Jamieson said Leach not only made his family vulnerable to arrest by stashing his drugs, cash and guns at their house, he put them at risk to be targeted by rivals.

“This collection of money, drugs and weapons in their home placed the family in jeopardy of being arrested and facing charges. All these circumstances show a significant disregard for the safety and wellbeing of his family,” Jamieson said.

“In my view his moral culpability is high, having regard to his pivotal and insulated role as the head of this well-organized business-like drug line, his preparedness to engage in threats of violence, his clear motivation being one of profit, his predatory relationship with addicts as cheap labour for his operation and his disregard for the safety and security of the public.”

Jamieson noted that Leach’s letters of support were from his mother Karen, 70, sister Rhonda, 40 and nephew Marcus, 20, all three of whom were arrested and charged along with the gang’s kingpin last August.

But with Friday’s sentencing, the charges against the other family members were stayed.

His mother cursed at police in the courtroom as she walked out before the proceedings ended. At one point, she shouted “lie” as Jamieson read his lengthy decision.

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A Federal Court judge has ruled that a United Nations gang associate should be allowed out of immigration detention pending his deportation to Iraq.

Chief Judge Paul Crampton sided with two immigration board members who decided earlier this spring that convicted gunman Aram Ali should be allowed to leave detention and live with his family in Calgary.

Both board members placed Ali, 32, on strict conditions “to adequately mitigate” any risk Ali poses to the public.

But Ali was never released following the immigration board rulings because the Canada Border Services Agency asked the Federal Court to review the decisions, arguing the board members had made a mistake and that Ali was still too dangerous to be allowed into the community.

Ali was convicted for shooting up a gang rival’s Range Rover outside Surrey’s T-Barz strip club in February 2009. The vehicle’s driver was struck, but the target of the shooting, Independent Soldier Tyler Hillock, escaped injury.

Ali testified that he did the shooting for a friend, high-ranking UN gangster Barzan Tilli-Choli. At the time, Ali was on bail on a drug trafficking charge.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge called him a mercenary for hire, and in December 2015 sentenced him to eight-and-a-half years, reduced to three-and-a-half after credit for his pretrial custody.

While serving his sentence, a deportation order was issued against him on the grounds of serious criminality. In March, another immigration board member ruled that he was too dangerous to stay in Canada, saying “the circumstances of Mr. Ali’s most recent offence are chilling.”

So when he reached his statutory release in April, Ali was handed over to the CBSA to await deportation.

That triggered a routine 48-hour detention review before immigration board member Laura Ko, who ordered his release on a $5,000 bond and several conditions.

The CBSA sought and got a stay of Ko’s ruling the same day at the Federal Court and he remained in custody.

Then on May 3, board member Michael McPhelan ordered Ali released again on more stringent conditions and two $5,000 bonds — one put up by his mother in Calgary and the second by a family friend.

Ali was still not released as the CBSA returned to the Federal Court.

Crampton heard the case May 25 via video conference and issued a ruling earlier this week.

He said that neither the Ko nor the McPhelan decisions was “unreasonable.”

Crampton said the conditions placed on Ali by both board members “would ensure that he would likely report for removal from Canada, if and when required to do so.”

And the conditions, including a curfew, “would collectively ensure that he would not pose a meaningful risk to the public,” Crampton said.

Ali was expected to be released Thursday.

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United Nations gang hitman Cory Vallee was convicted Friday of conspiring to kill the notorious Bacon brothers and murdering one of their closest friends.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Janice Dillon said the Crown had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt that Vallee was brought in to the UN as a hitman, and that he was one of two shooters who killed Red Scorpion Kevin LeClair outside a Langley strip mall on Feb. 6, 2009.

Handout photo of Jamie Bacon (left) and Kevin LeClair, who was slain in Feb., 2009.

“The decision to kill LeClair was planned and deliberate, with time to assess the situation,” Dillon said. “Cory Vallee was a member of the conspiracy to kill members of the Bacon group. LeClair was a target with a price on his head. Vallee was at the Thunderbird Centre intending to kill the LeClair target and he achieved his goal.”

LeClair’s father sobbed when Dillon pronounced the guilty verdict. The small, high-security Vancouver courtroom was packed with police and prosecutors who had worked on the case.

The brazen daylight murder at a busy mall was part of a bloody turf war between the UN and the Red Scorpions that escalated when popular UN member Duane Meyer was shot to death in Abbotsford on May 8, 2008.

The UN hunted their enemies across the region, watching their hangouts, recording licence plates and circulating their photos.

Dillon noted that the four key Crown witnesses, known as A, B, C and D due to a publication ban, were all former UN members and “unsavory” characters.

But she said some of their testimony was corroborated by video surveillance, intercepted conversations, and other evidence gathered by police during the massive investigation.

In convicting Vallee of murder, Dillon said she relied specifically on the evidence of witnesses B and C, who testified about being with the hitman the day LeClair was shot.

B testified that he met Vallee at a Tim Hortons near the Thunderbird Mall hours before LeClair was gunned down.

“Vallee showed Witness B an AR-15 gun that was in the back passenger area of (his vehicle),” Dillon noted.

Cory Vallee in 2011 mug shots provided by police

Surveillance video from the Tim Hortons confirmed B’s testimony about meeting Vallee, Witness C and another man named Ismailaj Kreshnik at 1 p.m., Dillon said.

Vallee’s lawyers had argued that C was actually one of the shooters and that Vallee left the area after the Tim Hortons meeting.

But Dillon said she had “concluded that Vallee remained as it was his job to do.”

Vallee, Witness B and Kreshnik “spotted LeClair in his truck and they followed him to where he parked at the Thunderbird Centre and then entered the Browns Social House restaurant,” Dillon said.

They contacted the other shooter, Jesse Adkins, and he met them, and then “they parked and waited.”

LeClair left the restaurant at about 4 p.m. and headed toward his Lincoln pick-up.

“Two shooters killed LeClair shortly after he got into the driver’s seat of his truck and tried to get away,” Dillon said.

A handgun and an AR-15 were left at the scene “along with a black duffle bag from which the machine gunman had removed the AR-15,” Dillon said.

She said witnesses to the shooting, as well as a mall surveillance video and the Tim Hortons video “establish a consistency between the appearance of the machine gunman and Cory Vallee.”

“Witness B described the getaway and a conversation with Vallee afterwards in which Vallee described a problem with the safety on the AR-15,” Dillon said.

Witnesses had testified that the gun seemed to jam at first.

“Vallee later told Witness C that the gun was awesome,” Dillon noted.

Vallee sold his black Caravan right after the shooting “because he believed that the van linked him to the LeClair crime scene,” she said.

Dillon said “the murder of LeClair was a contract killing.”

“While it was not established that Vallee did receive money for the killing of LeClair, it was intended that he would receive payment.”

The key witnesses and other evidence in the case proved that Vallee was also part of the plot to kill the Bacons from Jan. 1, 2008 to Feb. 8, 2009, Dillon said.

“Vallee was introduced to high-level members of the gang by (leader Clay) Roueche as ‘Frankie’ and given the role as a hitman in the search to kill members of the Bacon group. Vallee changed his nickname to Panther and participated in the search. He was given a UN ring for his service.”

Vallee received an automatic life sentence with no hope of parole 25 years for the first-degree murder conviction. He will be sentenced on the conspiracy conviction on June 28.

The two policing agencies that investigated the case — the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit and the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team — both said the verdict reflected the hard work done on the file.

“This was a long, complex and resource-intensive investigation,” IHIT Superintendent Donna Richardson said. “I would like to acknowledge the dedication and tireless efforts of investigators from IHIT and CFSEU-BC as well as our numerous domestic and foreign partner agencies that contributed to this investigation.”

CFSEU Chief Officer Kevin Hackett said the convictions came because of the “sustained cooperation, hard work and persistence of IHIT and CFSEU-BC members.”

“Officers and support staff from numerous agencies have also assisted over these past seven years,” Hackett said. “The result should also serve as a reminder to those who threaten our communities with gang and gun violence, we will not rest until they are held to account.”

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A former Metro Vancouver realtor who has been leasing luxury properties to B.C. gangsters is behind bars in the U.S. charged with international money laundering.

Omid Mashinchi, 35, appeared in a Boston courtroom last month and was ordered held pending trial.

U.S. authorities allege that he wired hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug money over several months last year to banks in Massachusetts through one of his company’s accounts.

The indictment in the case says that Mashinchi knew the funds involved “represented the proceeds of crime” and “that such transportation, transmission and transfer was designed in whole or in part to conceal and disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership and the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity.”

The underlying crime alleged is “the manufacture, importation, sale and distribution of a controlled substance.”

The charges against Mashinchi were sworn in January, but remained under seal until his arrest in April as he landed at SeaTac International Airport on a flight from Vancouver. He was going to visiting his parents in Sacramento.

There are no details in the U.S. allegations about the source of the criminal money.

A Postmedia investigation has found that Mashinchi has started at least three companies in B.C. since 2006, all related to the real estate industry.

And for years, police say, Mashinchi has been associating with B.C. gangsters, including leasing them condos that were used both as stash houses and as residences.

Postmedia has learned that his company Mashinchi Investments, also known as the Residence Club, leased the luxury North Vancouver condo where Brothers Keepers boss Gavinder Grewal was shot to death last December.

And Mashinchi also leased out a West Vancouver house that was targeted in an unsolved drive-by shooting on October 8, 2017.

“Mashinchi is well-known to the policing community and has rented several properties to known gang members,” Mike Porteous, a Vancouver police superintendent. “Many of these properties have been tied to criminal activity such as drug dealing and violent events including murder and drive-by shootings‎, which are gang-related.”

B.C.’s anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit has also come across Mashinchi and his properties in recent years.

“He has had for many years an association to the Wolf Pack,” Sgt. Brenda Winpenny said.

The Wolf Pack is a gang alliance consisting of some members of the Hells Angels, some Red Scorpion gangsters and some in the Independent Soldiers gang. It has been locked for years in a deadly gang conflict with rivals from the United Nations gang and Dhak-Duhre group.

B.C. Attorney General David Eby has repeatedly raised concerns about organized crime laundering money through casinos and the province’s hot real estate market. But the charges against Mashinchi suggest dirty cash could also be infusing property leasing and high-end rentals.

“This is the first time that I heard that leasing may be used or tied to people involved in organized crime to conceal transactions or to be involved with money laundering,” Eby said Friday. “It is another example of why the province has a responsibility to look very carefully at what’s happening in real estate and identify weaknesses that would allow this kind of activity to take place.”

Mashinchi faces no criminal charges in B.C. nor has any record here.

He was a realtor with the Royalty Group from April 2009 until June 2016, when he voluntarily gave up his licence.

Elise Palmer, of the Real Estate Council of B.C., would not say if there had been any complaints made against Mashinchi.

“Our investigations are confidential so I can’t tell you if there were any complaints against him. I can tell you there were no disciplinary decisions against him or no disciplinary action.”

Even to operate a property leasing or rental business, Mashinchi would require a licence issued by the real estate council. He used to have a management licence, but no longer does, Palmer said.

“Rental property management is a licensed activity. He has no licence with us at all,” she said. “So if he was doing unlicenced activity, that is something you would want to ask the superintendent of real estate.”

Despite not having a licence, Mashinchi has continued to lease condos through the Residence Club.

The “club” operates out of an unmarked townhouse at 867 Richards St., three doors down from a similar unit that Mashinchi bought last September 2017 for over $1.5 million.

In U.S. court documents, Mashinchi’s lawyer said Mashinchi’s brother Navid would be running the business while his sibling is awaiting trial.

But someone answering the phones at the company this week said that “Navid no longer works here.” The woman referred calls to “Navid and Omid’s attorney,” but refused to provide a name for any lawyer.

“That I cannot help you with. Sorry,” she said before hanging up.

As of Friday, the company was still advertising one-, two- and three-bedroom “self-catered units, well-situated in Downtown Vancouver.”

Suites were being rented for hundreds a night through online sites Expedia and Booking.com.

All three of Mashinchi’s companies — Mashinchi Investments Ltd., Omid Mashinchi Personal Real Estate Corp. and MLUX Homes Inc. — list the offices of Royalty Group Realty at 1065 Seymour as their address.

Royalty Group office manager Homeyra Panah said Mashinchi no longer has any affiliation with the real estate company, but simply has a mailbox there.

“What happened is that when he returned his licence to the council, he still had his mailbox here,” she said. “We don’t have any idea why he would put all of his companies at the office address here after he resigned all of his licences.”

She said Mashinchi at one point had both a realtor’s licence and a property management licence and ran another business called 604 Rentals.

Mashinchi had recently been asked not to use Royalty’s address, she said, adding that she had heard about the U.S. charges.

“We saw on Google. I was Googling him. We had some landlords that were contacting the office,” she said.

So how could organized crime use condo leases to launder illicit proceeds?

Christine Duhaime, an anti-money laundering expert and lawyer, said leases or rental properties could be misused through “trade-based money laundering — where you inflate the price to get a fake invoice to then move money.”

For example, if a property rented for $10,000 a month, the landlord could actually put twice that amount into the bank as the rent, effectively laundering $10,000.

“There is no record in the sense that it is just a private contract between you and the landlord so nobody really knows who lives in what space or how much you are paying for rent,” Duhaime said. “If you are going to fabricate the prices of things, it is really hard to detect that the money was not legitimately earned.”

Unlike real estate agents, those involved in property leasing are not required to report suspicious transactions to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, better known as Fintrac.

Fintrac communications officer Jamela Austria said that a recent federal government report recognized that there are other businesses not currently covered by money laundering laws that “play an integral role within the real estate sector.”

“These entities are in a unique position to gather and report information related to money laundering and terrorist financing,” she said. “The real estate sector consists of high-value financial transactions and high-risk clients, including individuals in vulnerable occupations and businesses.”

RCMP Chief Supt. Keith Finn said there is obvious concern about money laundering through the real estate sector in B.C.

“Whenever you have a quick increase in prices there is an opportunity there for the criminals among us to use the flipping of houses and purchase and disposal as means to launder their money,” he said.

Finn said “the biggest challenge” of organized criminals is how to clean their funds.

Like Duhaime, Finn said leasing could be used in “trade-based” laundering “if there is enough money exchanging hands on a monthly basis.”

Asked specifically about whether the RCMP in B.C. is working with U.S. law enforcement on the Mashinchi case, Finn said: “I would say we are interested stakeholders.”

“It is an intriguing file. It raises a number of questions,” he said.

Eby said the possibility of condo leasing being used in money laundering “is another example of why we need the federal government to join with us in this work.”

“We talked about the transnational aspect of this before. Usually we are talking about China, but here it’s the United States. We need the federal government involved to help us connect the dots with things that are happening internationally and to provide those resources to the RCMP and the Canada Revenue Agency.

Postmedia obtained a copy of the leasing agreement that Mashinchi Investment Ltd. signed with the owner of the luxury North Vancouver condo where Grewal was murdered on Dec. 22, 2017.

Mashinchi signed the two-year agreement in February 2016, listing another name as the tenant who would be occupying the premises.

The agreed-upon rent for the penthouse suite was $5,500 a month and Mashinchi provided post-dated cheques on a Bank of Montreal business account.

The agreement says that he is not to sublet the suite, assessed this year at just under $1.9 million, at any time without written approval.” Nor was he allowed to use the suite “as a short-term rental.”

Grewal, who was facing a manslaughter charge at the time of his murder, moved into the unit after he was released on strict bail conditions on Sept. 27, 2017. His name appears nowhere on the condo lease. He was killed inside the apartment on Dec. 22.

Grewal’s Brothers Keepers gang is aligned to the Wolf Pack through the Red Scorpions. His murder remains unsolved.

One of Mashinchi’s Boston lawyers, Joseph Savage, declined to comment on the money laundering case when contacted by Postmedia.

HIs client is facing five charges related to separate transactions in January, July and August 2017 totalling almost US$237,000. The U.S. alleges Mashinchi was paid a commission to wire the money through his company’s bank account.

Details of Mashinchi’s life before Vancouver were laid out in court documents when he tried unsuccessfully to get bail in a Seattle courtroom after his April arrest.

He was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1982 and moved to Germany when he was a toddler “for his father’s business and because of the war between Iran and Iraq.”

His parents sent him to school in Victoria in 1999 and he moved to the Lower Mainland a year later. He has Iranian, German and Canadian citizenship, something U.S. prosecutors argued could make him a flight risk.

His parents moved from Germany to Sacramento in 2008, where his father now runs a contracting business. Mashinchi’s Seattle lawyer Michael Martin said in his submissions that his client could stay with his parents pending his trial and noted that he has no criminal record.

“There is no indication he would choose to flee the country and become a fugitive of the United States, particularly in light of his history and character,” Martin said.

But U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler denied Mashinchi bail, saying he could apply again in Boston.

The “defendant poses a risk of non-appearance based on financial resources, possession of three passports, international ties, residence in Canada, and an immigration detainer. Defendant poses a risk of danger based on the nature of the alleged offence,” she said. “There does not appear to be any condition or combination of conditions that will reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance at future court hearings while addressing the danger to other persons or the community.”

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B.C.’s public safety minister says he has serious concerns about a new motorcycle club of Lower Mainland firefighters called Florian’s Knights that has been attending events with the Hells Angels.

“This is just disturbing on so many levels,” Mike Farnworth said after Postmedia obtained a photo of a founding member of the Knights posing with three Hells Angels.

Farnworth said firefighters face incredible danger on the job, made worse in recent years by “a rise in fires in homes where drug labs are located.”

“And many of those labs allegedly have links to the Hells Angels. So I find it more than a bit disturbing that you’ve got a motorcycle gang composed of firefighters associating with Hells Angels who may be making their job even more dangerous than it already is.”

Farnworth said he has asked his staff to look into the issue and report back to him.

The Knights are wearing a three-piece patch on the backs of their leather vests, meaning they sought permission from the Hells Angels when they were forming, retired police biker expert Brad Stephen told Postmedia.

Stephen, who was a firefighter before his long career with the Vancouver Police Department, said it’s disturbing that some firefighters want to associate with Hells Angels.

“What the Florian’s Knights have chosen to do is obviously seek permission and they’ve received permission from the Hells Angels to wear a three-piece patch and they go out of their way to associate, party, ride, commiserate with members of the Hells Angels and with members of support clubs of the Hells Angels,” Stephen said Monday. “In my opinion, that is a very disturbing thing.”

The Knights contact person, Nick Elmes, is a Burnaby firefighter, as are two others in the new club. There are also two New Westminster firefighters and a retired Vancouver firefighter.

Burnaby Fire Chief Joe Robertson said he also has concerns about the Knights and has met with the RCMP to discuss the issue.

“The city and the fire department do not condone any association of our members with the Hells Angels. We support the good work that all the rest of our firefighters do in the community,” Robertson said Monday. “This reflects really poorly on the good work that everybody else does.”

Some of the Knights have been wearing their vests, known as “colours” on their way to work, Robertson said.

“I conveyed my displeasure because they were riding to work in their biker colours and we have a legal opinion that says that they can actually do that,” he said.

“There are concerns. I share the same concerns that the police have.”

Elmes, who said he is a founding member of the Knights, said in an interview Monday that the club formed to raise money for charity and that no one should be concerned.

He admitted the Knights have been at events with Hells Angels but said those events were open to anyone to attend.

As for the photo of him with three Hells Angels, including Kelowna president Damiano Dipopolo, Elmes said he is a childhood friend of Dipopolo.

“I can’t help that they are at the same ride we are at,” Elmes said.

Elmes said the Knights advised the Hells Angels that they were starting their new club.

“I told them what I was planning on doing. I gave the whole motorcycle community a warning on what was going on before we started flying our colours,” Elmes said, adding that he asked the HA: “Do you have any issues with us doing this?”

Another social media comment obtained by Postmedia has a member of the HA-aligned Devil’s Army biker club in Campbell River thanking the Florian’s Knights for their recent hospitality.

Elmes said if the public has any concerns about his group “it is because the media and the cops are putting absolute lies in people’s heads.”

“I don’t think there should be a concern. Everyone is just riding, doing their thing. This isn’t Sons of Anarchy, where guys wearing their vests are committing crimes and murdering people,” he said of the TV show about a fictitious biker gang in California. “This is just guys on their bikes riding at charitable events.”

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Karen Leach beat a series of charges two weeks ago when her son pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and firearms counts and the Crown dropped its case against the Coquitlam senior, her daughter and grandson.

But Leach is still before the courts as the government tries to get her long-time Coquitlam residence forfeited as an instrument of illegal activity.

When Leach’s house on Cortes Avenue was raided by the RCMP in June 2017, investigators seized $700,000 in Canadian and U.S. cash, six firearms and 2,000 fentanyl pills.

Her son Andrew, who was sentenced in B.C. provincial court on May 25 to 16 years in jail for leading a fentanyl trafficking operation, didn’t live in the family home where his drug proceeds were stashed.

That is why his sister Rhonda, nephew Marcus and his mother were all originally charged as being part of his operation.

And while the criminal charges were stayed against the relatives, the director of civil forfeiture continues to want the family home, Andrew Leach’s Coquitlam condo and several vehicles forfeited to the government.

The suit alleges the house, currently assessed at $893,000, and the vehicles “are instruments and proceeds of unlawful activity.”

The court documents said the house “has been used by the defendants to engage in unlawful activities” including some that “were likely to cause serious bodily harm.”

“The defendants did not and do not have sufficient legitimate income to have acquired and maintained the real property and the vehicles,” the director of civil forfeiture alleged. “Each of the defendants knew or ought to have known the manner in which the real property and the vehicles were being used.”

The crimes linked to the house are trafficking, storage and production of controlled substances, possession of the proceeds of crime, laundering the proceeds of unlawful activity, credit card fraud, and unsafe storage of firearms, the forfeiture claim says.

In her response, Leach, who is 70, denied participating in criminal activity or having any knowledge of others linked to criminal activity in her house.

She also said she “has no knowledge of the items located and seized by the RCMP at the Cortes Avenue property.”

But an agreed statement of facts read at her 34-year-old son’s sentencing said four firearms were found inside Karen Leach’s bedroom closet, including a Cobray M-11 machine pistol with an oversized magazine and readily accessible ammunition, a Winchester Model 1200 police 12-gauge shotgun, a Glock pistol with an unloaded oversized magazine and a second magazine containing 17 rounds of ammunition, and a loaded Glock 23 containing 15 rounds.

Cobray M11 machine pistol

The senior also had a silencer, a scope and 2,000 fentanyl pills in the closet.

In her 40-year-old daughter’s bedroom, police found $450,270 under the bed. In grandson Marcus’s room, another $224,089 was found, as will as 9 mm ammunition.

In the family’s TV room, police found a box labelled “Andrew’s counter,” which contained a money counting machine. They also seized over 1,000 Xanax pills.

Two more pistols, both with destroyed serial numbers, were found in the house’s garage, wrapped in tea towels, along with more ammunition and a second silencer.

The director also wants Andrew Leach’s condo, assessed at $237,000, forfeited.

Andrew Leach was charged after a year-long undercover investigation by Coquitlam RCMP into a fentanyl drug-trafficking organization.

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Jimi Singh Sandhu once tried to convince an immigration board official that he was a changed man and had left his criminal life and gang associations behind.

He begged for another chance to stay in Canada, the country he had lived in since the age of seven.

“I would just like one chance, one opportunity to prove myself to you,” he said at the time. “I won’t let you down.”

But the Canadian official said she was unconvinced that Sandhu was reformed and that he minimized his role in violent assaults in 2010 and 2012.

He was also charged with killing rival Red Scorpion gang leader Matt Campbell in Abbotsford in January 2014, but the charge was stayed a year later.

Sandhu was deported in early 2016 for serious criminality.

Now 28, he is in judicial custody after being arrested June 14 in India and charged with running an illicit drug manufacturing plant, according to Indian news reports.

Another man identified as Canadian Nguyen Manh Cuong was also charged, along with nine others — two of whom are British nationals who live in Goa.

The Hindustan Times reported that Cuong told Indian police that he met Sandhu in Vietnam and was helping him make connections to sell ketamine there.

Cuong also claimed that he agreed to travel to India to guide Sandhu in processing ketamine at the Goa factory.

Police seized 308 kilograms of ketamine, 2,000 kilograms of precursor chemicals, as well as opium, cocaine and hashish.

The Times also said investigators believe the drug gang was smuggling its product out of India and selling it to traffickers in Canada and Africa.

Sandhu was once closely associated to Jujhar Khun-Khun, Sukh Dhak and members of the United Nations gang. Some of his friends have been part of the gang conflict that has left dozens dead across the Lower Mainland over the last three years. Khun-Khun pleaded guilty in Kelowna on May 1 to conspiracy to kill Red Scorpion Jonathan Bacon in 2011 and was sentenced to 18 years minus pre-trial credit. Dhak, who was behind the Bacon murder, was shot to death in November 2012.

Abbotsford police were so concerned about Sandhu’s gang involvement that it took the extraordinary step in 2015 of warning the public to steer clear of him or risk getting caught in the crossfire.

Sgt. Brenda Winpenny of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit said Sandhu was “long-known to police here for his involvement in organized crime.”

“This is just another example of these individuals tied to the criminal lifestyle here in Canada that have left and continued on with their criminal paths in another country,” Winpenny said.

Sandhu himself acknowledged to the immigration board that he knew he had to change his life.

At his hearing two and a half years ago, he said: “I know that path is either go to jail or you die.”

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A convicted Canadian killer who fled the country while on parole for a 1999 gang hit has been arrested in India as part of a drug ring that has been shipping the drug ketamine to B.C. and beyond.

The RCMP has a Canada-wide warrant out for Kenny Cuong Manh Nguyen, 38, who failed to return from a 2015 trip to Vietnam authorized by the Parole Board of Canada.

According to the warrant, Cuong “contacted his parole officer and indicated that he has decided to remain in Vietnam and will not be returning to Canada.”

Cuong was arrested in Goa, India, last week in connection with a ketamine factory allegedly run by former B.C. gangster Jimi Sandhu.

He had entered India using a Vietnamese passport and didn’t admit to Indian police that he was Canadian at first. When he learned he could be facing a lengthy sentence for his alleged role in the ketamine ring, Cuong said he was from Canada and requested consular services.

Ketamine factory in Goa, India allegedly owned by former BC gangster Jimi Sandhu

Cuong was convicted of a second-degree murder for the fatal gang shooting of 19-year-old Doan Minh Vu in February 1999 outside Madison’s nightclub in downtown Vancouver. Cuong was in a vehicle driven by gang leader Gurmit Dhak, who was convicted of manslaughter for rolling down the window so that Cuong could take a better shot.

Dhak was gunned down in October 2010 outside Burnaby’s Metrotown mall. The aftermath of Dhak’s murder was a bloody eight-year-long gang war that left dozens dead across the Lower Mainland.

Sandhu was charged in 2014 with one of those murders, the fatal stabbing of Red Scorpion leader Matt Campbell. But after a year in pre-trial custody, the charge against Sandhu was stayed and he was eventually deported to India for earlier convictions.

At his immigration hearing, Sandhu, 28, claimed to be reformed and asked for another chance to stay in Canada despite his criminal history. He denied being a gang member, but admitted having associates in the Dhak-Duhre group, as well as the United Nations gang.

An Indian official told Postmedia on Wednesday that Sandhu allegedly opened the Goa ketamine factory about three months ago to finish a semi-manufactured version of the chemical that was being made in another state.

And the official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak about the case, said that the ketamine was exclusively destined for Canada, as the illicit drug is not popular in India.

Once the ketamine manufacturing process was complete, they would send it to Mumbai, where “they would put it inside these tea sashes and coffee packages and masala packages, which are usually sent by Indians to their relatives in Canada.”

The packages, some of which were seized during the investigation, were being sent via courier to Canadian addresses, he said.

The official also said the packages were professionally sealed and likely wouldn’t have drawn the suspicions of customs agents in either country.

Each couriered shipment contained 53 packages of 100 grams each, so about half a kilogram.

The Canadian recipients of the ketamine are believed to have been paying the manufactures in India through “hawala” — a system where the money is paid at the Canadian end to a broker, who then has an associate at the Indian end pay the debt.

The official also said investigators believe cocaine sent from North America was also used as payment.

Sandhu was the second in command of the ketamine operation, while another Canadian with the nickname “Laddy” is being sought as the gang’s suspected leader, the official said.

Sandhu was allegedly working closely with a British man living in Goa named Jonathan Thorn, who has drug convictions in the U.K., he said.

During raids last week in several Indian states, police seized 308 kilograms of ketamine, precursor chemicals, as well as hash, cocaine and opium.

The criminal proceedings could take years, the official said. The mandatory sentence for a first-time conviction is 12 years.

The RCMP had no comment Wednesday on whether officers would be following up with Indian authorities on the Cuong warrant.

“The RCMP cannot comment on the actions of government and law enforcement in other countries,” Sgt. Marie Damian said in an email.

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The girlfriend of high-profile gangster Jamie Bacon died last December of a carfentanil overdose, according to an investigation by the B.C. Coroners Service.

Kelowna resident Madison Fine was found unresponsive in a Richmond hotel Dec. 1, 2017 — the same day that Bacon had a murder charge against him stayed in B.C. Supreme Court.

The two-page report by Coroner Debra Rees said that Fine, 25, had overdosed the night before she died, was taken to hospital by ambulance and was released.

Postmedia earlier revealed that Bacon was concerned when Fine did not attend his court appearance Dec. 1, when Justice Kathleen Ker stayed charges against him in connection with the 2007 Surrey Six murders.

Bacon’s mother Susan went to the Richmond hotel where Fine had been staying and found the young drug trafficker dead inside.

Rees said in her report that the “RCMP Major Crimes Unit attended the scene and determined there was no suspicion of foul play.”

“As death was obvious, no resuscitation was attempted and the female was pronounced deceased on scene,” she said. 

“Investigation revealed that Ms. Fine was known to consume illicit substances regularly. Powder and a rolled up bill were found at the scene.”

“I find that Ms. Madison Zoe Fine died in Richmond on December 1, 2017 of carfentanil toxicity. I classify this death as accidental and make no recommendations,” Rees wrote.

Carfentanil is considered 100 times more deadly than fentanyl and 10,000 times as toxic as a unit of morphine.

Rees noted that despite being taken to hospital on Nov. 30, Fine had no hospitalizations over the two previous years.

“Family reported that when they became aware of Ms. Fine’s problematic substance use, they offered support and treatment but were declined,” Rees said.

Fine had travelled from Kelowna to Vancouver specifically to attend Bacon’s court appearance.

In an obituary Fine was described as the “true love to Jamie.”

“It is with great sadness and heartfelt loss that we share with you the passing of our dear, sweet Maddie to an accidental overdose,” the obituary said. “Maddie was the most headstrong, smart, creative, entrepreneurial (and maddening at times) daughter, who never accepted help. She always wanted to solve things herself. She had an uncanny ability to read a room and any situation.

She always fought for the underdog and helped a larger community of people in need.”

Fine was charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking on both Oct. 1, 2012, and Jan. 23, 2013. She was sentenced to a year in jail.

In February 2014, she was arrested in downtown Kelowna and charged with trafficking heroin. During a subsequent strip search by Kelowna RCMP, bags of crack cocaine, cocaine and heroin fell out of her pants.

A provincial court judge later ruled the strip search had violated Fine’s charter rights because it was videotaped and could have been viewed by others in a monitoring room at the detachment.

When she died, she was still before the courts on charges of wilfully resisting a peace officer and impaired driving.

Bacon remains in pre-trial custody on a charge of counselling someone to commit murder for a botched2008 shooting of a former associate.

That case is due to go to trial in September.

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