TOWNHOUSE OF HORRORS

A "crime-infested" East Vancouver condo complex that housed more than
a dozen marijuana grow operations was also home to an alleged
prostitution ring and a credit-card forgery operation.

Vancouver police raided the complex in the 5600-block Wessex Street
last month, shutting down grow-ops in 13 of the building's 28 suites
and seizing 3,700 plants.

City building inspectors said they'd never seen a strata building with
as many grow-ops before. Another unit had been used as an ecstasy drug
lab. Notices posted on the doors of the affected units warn that the
suites are now unsafe to occupy and that the owners must pay Vancouver
City Hall $1,700 each to cover the costs of dismantling the grow-ops.

Evidence of the illegal agriculture was not hard to miss
yesterday.

An eight-metre-by-eight-metre courtyard garden plot and most of the
other planting areas around the building -- visible to most of the
condo units but not to the passing public -- are completely, and
thickly, carpeted with potting soil.

Poking through the soil are the chopped trunks of dozens of marijuana
plants, some of their root bases still wrapped in seedling gauze. A
"keep off the grass" sign suggests that somewhere under the dirt is
the original, legal greenery.

Compounding the woes for the few media-shy residents who remain at the
complex was a bust last Thursday during which RCMP commercial crime
investigators arrested 49-year-old resident Wing Tat Li for forgery,
possession of stolen credit cards and unauthorized use of a credit
card.

The illegal credit-card factory charges follow a VPD probe in May that
unearthed an alleged brothel in one of the units later found stuffed
with pot plants.

VPD executed two search warrants May 3 and discovered 11 women and
four men in two of the units. Four Korean passports and several
thousand dollars were recovered. Some of the women were Canadian,
others Korean and Chinese, said Const. Howard Chow.

Charged with keeping a common bawdy house and procuring a person for
the purposes of prostitution is 37-year-old Pik "Monica" Cheung.

The tipoff to the brothel case came from an ad placed in a Chinese
language newspaper. A male investigator called the number on the ad
and was quoted a price for service. A female undercover officer then
posed as a student looking for sex-trade work. Cheung allegedly told
the officer she could make a decent living plying the world's oldest
profession out of the Wessex Street complex.

Resident Yonghua Li said he bought into the complex in 2001. Within
six months, Li said, he and his wife realized "the building had a
management problem."

Of the 28 units, about 20 are the property of overseas owners who
hired a local manager to take care of their suites. That manager, Li
said, agreed to do the job for free and quickly took over the
building's strata council. Li said only seven owners actually reside
there now.