DEALER CLAIMS $4.2M BUST ENDED HIS CRIMINAL CAREER

Defence Lawyer Seeks Leniency for Admitted Gangster

An admitted gang member who claims he has left his drug-dealing
lifestyle behind him and gone straight faces a prison sentence for
trafficking after being caught with 213,000 ecstasy tablets with a
street value of $4.2 million.

Hui Heng (Philip) Xu, 35, who was targeted and nabbed by city police
and the RCMP joint forces unit as part of Project Intrigue, pleaded
guilty last May to one count of possession of drugs for the purpose of
trafficking.

Xu admitted he facilitated an enormous deal between two others on June
15, 2005, when he went to a parking lot in Foothills Industrial Park
early that morning and picked up three cardboard boxes filled with 41
bags of ecstasy pills from a semi-trailer.

Each of the bags weighed about 1.5 kilograms, for a total weight of
61.5 kilograms.

Xu then took them to his northeast home to be held for the buyer, but
was busted by officers who had been surveilling him for nine months.

"The absolute lowest sentence the Crown seeks is five years,"
prosecutor Ivanna Perozak told provincial court Judge John Bascom on
Thursday. "Philip is a long-time drug dealer.

"Obviously, this is a huge quantity of a combination of MDMA and
methamphetamines.

"They are targeted for young people, and the tragic consequences of
drugs is the social impact they have on society."

Leo Walters, a toxicology expert at the RCMP forensic lab in Edmonton,
testified there is no quality control in producing illegal drugs,
making them more dangerous and potentially deadly.

Police seized not only the illicit drugs, but also weapons and other
paraphernalia associated with the drug trade in Xu's home.

Perozak suggested Xu had not really left his criminal, gang-related
life in the past.

Defence lawyer Hersh Wolch said the involvement in this deal of his
client, who now has a wife, child and successful legitimate business,
was "brief and limited" and it was not sophisticated.

"This man now has a very proactive lifestyle and is unlikely to go
back to that milieu," said Wolch, who argued for a conditional jail
sentence of two years to be served in the community.

"He is a role model for people who have been in this lifestyle and is
happy to say he's living a different lifestyle now.

"He admits what he did was wrong. This is a lesser drug than most, but
a large involvement, and his involvement was less. He's financially
stable in a new life, and to put him in jail where one would expect
there would be people like those from his past would serve no purpose."

However, co-Crown counsel Chris Sabat said the offender's role was a
very important part of the transaction of illegal drugs, which
typically end up being distributed to young people.

Vice unit Staff Sgt. Nina Vaughn said in a report prepared for
sentencing that individual tablets would sell for $20 or, if sold by
the 100, would be about $10 each.

The cost to produce them, she said, would be about $2 to
$3.

Bascom will hand down his sentence on March 28.