TUNNEL SCHEME BURIED

Police Say Men Planned To Charge $1,000 Per Kilogram To Smuggle B.C.
Bud Through A Cramped Tunnel Under The Canada-U.S. Border

With its dilapidated white farmhouse, and tired looking greenhouse,
the property on Zero Avenue in Aldergrove was not much to look at,
but Francis Devandra Raj was willing to pay close to $595,000 to get
his hands on it.

According to police, however, the 30-year-old Surrey resident was not
thinking of the house, or of what it would take to restore it into a
country treasure, when he made a down payment of close to $300,000 in
cash last March.

Instead, police say, Raj appeared to be thinking of the rickety
Quonset hut in the driveway, and -- more importantly -- of the 100 or
so metres that separated it from a vacant, cedar-shaded house sitting
just across the border in Washington state.

He saw the possibility of building one of the most sophisticated
tunnels ever constructed under the U.S. border, police say, and a
chance to become a major conduit to smuggle B.C.'s coveted marijuana
into the United States.

To do that, however, Raj and his two business partners would need to
dig a four-foot-wide tunnel that stretched longer than a football
field without raising the suspicions of the police or customs agents
who were on constant patrol at the border crossing about 500 metres
from both properties.

Through court documents and a series of interviews, authorities
revealed for the first time on Thursday the details of that plot, as
well as some insight into the investigative work on both sides of the
border that broke up the smuggling ring within days of its first shipment.

"Collectively we have dismantled a criminal organization that was
capable of causing damage to both Canadian and American societies,"
Kim Scoville of Canada Customs said at a press conference on Thursday.

"The case is an example of how Canadian and American authorities are
working together to combat organized crime," added John McKay of the
U.S. Attorney Office.

On Thursday, McKay and others told the media of how Raj and his
partners carefully planed to build the tunnel, and how they had each
established a cover story from very early in the process.

In fact, not long after buying the property, Raj was on the doorstep
of Julie Luke, his new next-door neighbour, telling her how he wanted
to start an auto body repair shop in the Quonset hut.

True to his word, Raj and his two partners, Timothy Woo, 34, and
Johnathan Valenzuela, 27, would arrive at the property in Langley
Township from their Surrey homes about 8 a.m. each day and disappear
into the hut.

But police say that instead of pounding out dented cars, the three
would pick up their shovels and begin digging towards their expected
fortune. Working six days a week, and often until as late as 9 p.m.
or 10 p.m., the three soon built a concrete foundation for the
opening of their tunnel, as well as a winch system to hoist the dirt
that had been displaced from the hole below.

In the early going, things appeared to be proceeding to plan. The
two-storey Washington house across the street from where the tunnel
would end had already been purchased, the neighbours along the street
weren't snooping and the three were even able to find different
locations to dump the dirt when they hauled it away in a trailer
every two days.

What they couldn't have known, however, was that the authorities were
already on to them.

An investigator with Canada's Border Services Agency, who had been
led to Raj as part of a cocaine investigation, had already become
suspicious of the dirt they were hauling away from their hut, as well
as the supplies they were hauling in to help reinforce the tunnel as they dug.

By January of 2005, the investigator had reached the conclusion the
trio must be building a tunnel, and figured it must be going under
the border and into the U.S.

Within weeks, several agencies in both the U.S. and Canada figured
they knew what the three were doing.

Instead of pouncing right away, however, the agencies opted to wait
until the tunnel was built so they could catch the three in the act
of breaking the law.

To lay the groundwork for their eventual case, and to get a better
understanding of what was going on underground, authorities on both
sides of the border began to watch the three as closely as they could
without tipping them off.

While the men laboured with shovels to move dirt and rock almost 10
feet below the surface, authorities patiently watched and waited.

Many mornings when they arrived, the men would come with two-by-six
boards and rebar that they would painstakingly use to reinforce every
inch of the tunnel's walls and ceiling.

It was being built to last. Accordingly, the men also outfitted the
tunnel with its own ventilation shaft, its own power and with a sump
pump that would turn on every 12 minutes to get rid of the
groundwater that would have accumulated on the plywood floor.

By all accounts, their tunnel, which was finally completed on July
14, was shaping up to be the best that had ever been built into the U.S.

"It probably is one of the most significant, if not the most
significant, tunnel that we've seen enter the United States," said
Rodney Benson, a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

"They were more sophisticated than we gave them credit for," said
Insp. Pat Fogarty, with the Organized Crime Agency of B.C. "That's
quite a venture to undertake."

In anticipation of the tunnel's completion, the men had also already
been speaking with people who were interested in using it for moving drugs.

They had even established a price list, telling one trafficker they
would charge $500 per pound of marijuana smuggled through, adding
they could run loads of up to 300 pounds at a time.

What they didn't know, however, was that by July 2, authorities on
both sides of the border had already been into their tunnel, and had
shortly after set up two cameras in the three-bedroom Washington
house where the tunnel was to finish.

Not knowing this, however, and thinking that everything was still
going according to plan, the men did a test run with a dummy package
on July 14, the day the tunnel was completed.

By the next day, police say they were dragging two hockey bags filled
with marijuana through the tunnel and into a waiting van.

Even though things appeared to be going well, however, the men still
played it safe.

Greg Gassett, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent said on
Thursday that on days of the runs, the men would take the bags to the
hut early in the morning, but, fearing detection by police, would
attempt a number of diversions, or "burn runs," before taking it out
on the other side.

In once case, Gassett said, the men drove to a parking lot or rest
stop and sat for hours at a time before returning to their tunnel. In
another, he added, they drove to Seattle and switched cars before returning.

Likely thinking they had gone undetected on July 15, authorities said
Woo and Raj repeated the process the next day, this time hauling a
hockey bag and several black trash bags, which they loaded into a
vehicle with Utah licence plates driven by Valenzuela.

Valenzuela drove off and agents followed him to the Bellis Fair Mall,
north of Bellingham, where they say he met a woman with a small child
and handed off the vehicle. Drug enforcement agents who searched that
vehicle later found 93 kilograms of marijuana in a hockey bag, a gym
bag and two garbage bags.

Possibly scared off by the catch, Woo and Valenzuela did not take any
marijuana through the tunnel the next day, although they did take the
opportunity to smuggle U.S. beer north of the border into Canada.

Altogether, in the space of about a week, the men dragged close to
200 pounds of marijuana through the tunnel and into the U.S., enough
investigators thought, to make a solid case against all three.

As a result, police in the U.S. moved in Wednesday and arrested the
three, charging them with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and
conspiracy to import marijuana.

On Thursday, the three men were brought into U.S. District Court in
Seattle, where a magistrate ordered them to be locked up at the
federal detention center near Seattle. A hearing to determine whether
they will remain behind bars was set for Tuesday.

At the same time, Woo pleaded not guilty to an earlier charge, from
1999, that he conspired to import marijuana.

According to U.S. indictment documents, Raj has a criminal history
for possession of marijuana and immigration violations.

As for the tunnel, it will now be destroyed by investigators, who
pointed out Thursday how important it was to have stopped the three
from being successful.

"A tunnel that crosses the border is a significant threat to both
U.S. and Canadian national security," said Leigh Winchell, a special
agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"The implications are immense," he added.

When asked about the men, and the complexity of the tunnel they
built, Winchell acknowledged they had done impressive work, but
stopped short of giving them their due.

"They were smart enough to build a sophisticated tunnel," he said,
"but they weren't smart enough not to get caught."