STYMIED PROBE LED POLICE TO GANGS

The B.C. Supreme Court Bench Is Processing The Last Batch Of
Accused

The arrests occurred roughly four years ago -- and this week the B.C.
Supreme Court bench is processing the last batch of accused.

Supposedly members of a sophisticated cross-border pot trafficking
group -- they, along with members of four other separate but similar
smuggling rings -- were snared as a result of an undercover RCMP sting
that grew out of an ultimately stymied murder investigation.

Project Exacto was aimed at finding the killer of a Fraser Valley
marijuana grower murdered in 1996.

It turned into a handful of major drug conspiracy cases that taxed the
legal system and cost a fortune.

The main reason everything went sideways is that the investigation led
Mounties to a Fraser Valley resident named Gerard Morin.

He did a stint in prison on weapons offences and was believed by
police to be part of large criminal syndicate known as "the company."

Shortly after being introduced to Morin, then a married 43-year-old
father of two, an undercover RCMP officer was able to buy from him a
substantial amount of pot.

As the RCMP watched, it also appeared Morin was involved in a great
many illegal activities, including weapons and ammunition offences.

And he appeared to be in management when it came to the crime
hierarchy.

Surveillance tapes produced in court show him explaining to Stephen
Cox, a prime suspect (later acquitted) in the murder investigation, he
must wait for "a green light" on a particular cross-border deal.

"We tell you when," Morin said. "You've got to be discreet."

Things weren't safe, Morin explained: "They're still in chaos ... on
the other side there [the U.S.], that's why I'm not sending anybody
over there."

By that point, at the beginning of 2001, the RCMP had wiretap
authorizations from B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Patrick
Dohm based on conclusions drawn about Morin as a result of the
four-year-old investigation centred on Cox.

The evidence, in their eyes, suggested Morin was involved in
large-scale, cross-border illegal narcotics activities. Which he was.

He appeared to be doing business with men involved in cocaine
importation, marijuana production and exportation, and
money-laundering. Which he also was.

And he would later agree to supply U.S. undercover operatives with 500
pounds of marijuana at $3,200 a pound -- some $1.6 million in total.

Inadvertently, however, Morin led police to a key player, sometimes
more, who were part of a discreet group engaged in its own
cross-border smuggling, or which had its own import-export action.

And he brought grief to them all.

Called Project Exacto-Two, the police targeted the several independent
groups with whom Morin dealt.

Some were involved in feeding the massive pot appetite of the American
public, some were involved in bringing cocaine to Canada, some were
shipping huge amounts of dope into eastern Canada and all were
involved in money-laundering, given the huge illegal profits that were
being reaped.

Later this week the last of the men involved in cocaine trafficking
will be sentenced.

And B.C. Justice Selwyn Romilly is hearing the last of the many cases
that grew out of the investigation, a group allegedly involved solely
in producing and exporting marijuana -- Wade Alex Adam, Sean William
Doak, Robert Vaughn Hamm, Bryon John Newberry, Thomas William Westle
and Trevor Lee Ernest Zacharuk.

The scope and breadth of the law-enforcement investigation, which
ranged across the continent and down into Mexico, involved numerous
RCMP and other local police units: the Vancouver special observation
team, their Greater Vancouver drug section, the Vancouver integrated
proceeds of crime unit, Vancouver special intelligence section,
Vancouver security engineering section, southeast district drug
section, Kelowna and Chilliwack criminal intelligence section, Toronto
airport integrated unit, Langley detachment, Surrey detachment,
Mission detachment, Chilliwack detachment, Hope detachment, Fraser
Valley traffic services, the Abbotsford police department.

Also involved were the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal
Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security, valley narcotics
enforcement team, Seattle, and Skagit Valley integrated enforcement
team, Mount Vernon.

More than 119,000 private communications were intercepted and
captured.

Nine primary targets were covered by one surveillance warrant alone --
31 secondary targets and 38 locations approved for bugs. A second
covered 13 primaries, 52 secondary targets and 48 locations. A third
named 13 primary targets, 52 secondary and 51 sites. A fourth listed
14 primaries, 49 secondaries and 76 locations.

The cost of this leaves me breathless -- and we're not even counting
the four years of legal machinations and judicial arm-wrestling that
has gone on since. Millions and millions and millions of dollars.

In the end, their extensive international investigations led police to
believe they had five organized groups in their sights:

n The Doak organization (currently on trial before Romilly) which was
involved in the production, trafficking and the exportation of pot
using planes, helicopters, vehicles and human drug couriers. They
cooperated with the Yordanov group.

n The Yordanov organization was involved in production, trafficking
and the exportation of marijuana to the U.S. and worked with the Doak
group. Charges against the Yordanov group were stayed.

n The Oliynyk organization was involved in production, trafficking and
exportation of pot to the U.S. but also involved in cocaine
importation and trafficking. The key players in that group will be
sentenced later this week.

n Two other groups -- the Desroche and the Hollaus organizations --
were said to be involved in the import-export, pot-and-cocaine
business. They have all been through the mill.

Although these were all separate groups of people involved in their
own criminal activity, there was close cooperation between the Doak
and Yordanov groups, according police.

They often assisted each other by making deliveries to the other
organization's respective U.S. customers.

On Anacortes Island, U.S. authorities installed a camera and
videotaped three big deliveries of pot that were stored in a warehouse
leased by West Pak Fish Products.

The marijuana was driven from B.C. into Washington state hidden in a
tractor-trailer unit amid white plastic Moore-Clarke fish meal bags.

The police say more than a dozen trips were made to the Seattle area
and the Anacortes warehouse -- each shipment containing between 200
and 700 pounds of marijuana -- at $2,000 a pound, well you do the math
- -- as much as $1 million a run on average?

In addition to the tractor-trailer, police say the Doak-Yordanov
groups used a Cessna plane beginning in early February 2001 to deliver
marijuana to a small airstrip at Siskiyou in southern Washington.

Law enforcement officers say they watched as duffel bags changed hands
and the pilot returned to Canada with an unknown amount of cash,
handguns and ammunition.

They also used two helicopters.

When air transport appeared to be attracting too much attention, they
switched to walking it across near Sumas.

The number of persons completing the walk would vary from two to four,
each carrying about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) stuffed in a hockey bag.
In total, police watched 11 walk-across deliveries between April and
June 2001.

The law enforcement agencies were bent on determining how the
marijuana was produced, collected, transported, exported to the U.S.
and stored. They also wanted to know how the cocaine was being
imported into Canada from Mexico via the U.S.

Various residences, businesses and warehouse complexes across the
Lower Mainland were under surveillance.

The number of marijuana growing operations numbered in the hundreds.
Those who were being watched also seemed especially paranoid of spies.

According to material filed in court, those involved used numerous
telephones, cellular phones and pagers to arrange meetings and engaged
in countersurveillance techniques to frustrate would-be
eavesdroppers.

Several informants who agreed to supply police with information were
unwilling to testify in court.

The logistical problem of bringing a mega-investigation like this into
court -- as with Air India or Robert Pickton -- is enormous.

The judge has to mesh the schedules of numerous senior counsel and
time has to be found on already crowded dockets for lengthy trials.

As Romilly noted in one of his several rulings -- trying to get
together Crown and defence lawyers for the case before him was "like
trying to herd cats."

But everything seems prodigious.

Consider that a single affidavit supporting a surveillance
authorization was several hundred pages.

In the case before Romilly, the original disclosures made by the Crown
were massive -- 10 binders, each 10 centimetres thick, containing
about 3,000 pages.

And it would keep coming -- another 13 binders shortly afterwards,
another 15 a month later, 78 boxes of material a day later, and eight
more binders a few months after that.

It was the same in the other cases.

In one, there were an expected 41 witnesses, another would require 37
and there were volumes of video and audio surveillance.

The proceedings have been chewing up court time and running up the
public tab for the prosecution for four years.

In the case against the three accused known as the Oliynyk
organization -- Lloyd Allan Ferris, Joseph Elwood Roger LePage, and
David James Oliynyk, the court even went so far as selecting a
bilingual jury.

And that was no small or inexpensive task in this unilingual province
- -- before the defence changed its mind.

Nevertheless, they now face sentencing.

Romilly is an efficient trial judge who will bring closure and not be
sidetracked.

When the accused questioned whether B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief
Justice Dohm had time to conduct a proper review of the supporting
affidavits before issuing some wiretap warrants, he dismissed their
challenge.

Romilly heard that one authorization with a 25-page supporting
affidavit was signed "within a few minutes." Another authorization and
its 854-page affidavit was signed after being in Dohm's hands for a
day.

He saw no problem -- Dohm, he ruled, was "well familiar with the
background events and people involved ..." by the time the specific
warrants crossed his desk.

As for Morin, he has done his time.

After delivering a load of pot to undercover police in Seattle on
March 27, 2001, Morin pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in
Washington state to intent to distribute.

He was sentenced March 29, 2002, to 46 months in prison, served his
time and returned to Canada.