TRUCKLOADS OF POT

B.C. truckers fear their industry is being used by organized criminals
involved in the booming marijuana trade. Drivers prepared to take the risk
are being paid up to $50,000 to smuggle drugs across the border into the
United States.

Kim Bolan Vancouver Sun; With files from Chad Skelton

Lower Mainland truckers say they are being tempted with payments of up to
$50,000 a load to hide B.C. marijuana in their cargo for illegal
cross-border transport.

And legitimate trucking companies are concerned about shady operations
opening up overnight to take advantage of the brisk marijuana trade.

"I know some companies that are caught three or four times. How are they
still in the business?" asked Balbir Jawanda, owner of a Richmond trucking
company.

Jawanda started his company in 1969 and is astonished at what he has seen
in recent years.

Fly-by-night businesses are often underbidding legitimate companies by huge
margins, since they don't really need the revenue from the load -- making
it tough for the legal operators to survive.

"In 1974, we would get $2,000 for a Vancouver to L.A. trip," Jawanda said.
"Now it is as low as $1,300."

Several truckers interviewed during a Vancouver Sun investigation say they
are concerned about organized crime infiltrating the industry.

They say many truckers are tempted by the prospect of earning tens of
thousands of dollars without much chance of getting caught.

But the execution-style murders in recent months of two Lower Mainland
truckers with links to drugs also have industry insiders worried that the
violence is increasing.

Last March, Karmen Singh Johl, 63, of Vancouver, was found slumped at the
wheel of his Chrysler LeBaron on River Road in Delta. He died of gunshot
wounds.

And just three months earlier, trucker Gurwinder Singh Bath, 36, was found
shot to death in his silver Mercedes in a parking lot in Surrey's Bear
Creek Park.

Johl had a long history of drug offences, according to court records. He
was convicted in 1993 of possession of cocaine and conspiracy to traffic
and was sentenced to 10 years in jail. He also had two properties seized in
1998, as well as fancy cars and other luxury items after an RCMP
proceeds-of-crime investigation.

Bath, who drove for R&S Transportation, was known to police because his
name had surfaced in U.S court documents on a drug case in 2002.

Those documents alleged Bath hired another Lower Mainland trucker, Amandeep
Singh Sidhu, to take his marijuana-filled tractor-trailer across the border
at Oroville, Wash. The drugs were hidden in a compartment behind a load of
waste paper.

Sidhu and his passenger, Gurjinder Singh Shoker, of Delta, maintained they
didn't know about the drugs and were acquitted of the charges.

Neither Delta police nor Surrey RCMP are saying much about the unsolved
murders. But they said they are still pursuing a possible link between
them, as well as to cross-border drug smuggling by Indo-Canadian gangs.

R&S Transportation has been linked to other troubling occurrences in recent
years.

Owner Mindi Virk had a drive-by shooting at his house in May 2002 and in
July 2001, company dispatcher Lakhwinder Singh Sahota was shot in the leg
as he arrived for work by a man who first said something to him in Punjabi.

Virk could not be reached to comment this week. Several of his former
telephone numbers have been disconnected.

With the growth in Indo-Canadian organized crime, it is only natural that
some Indo-Canadians in the trucking industry would be drawn into the
transport end of the marijuana business.

Police and customs agencies on both sides of the border are certainly aware
of the problems.

Earlier this year, U.S. Customs noted a phenomenal increase in the amount
of marijuana being smuggled in from B.C. in commercial vehicles. Currently,
about 50 per cent of the seizures are from commercial trucks -- up from
just two per cent five years ago.

Tyler Morgan, of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says commercial
trucks have, without a doubt, "become a much larger method of smuggling.

"They can get bigger loads down, so for the same risk to the organization
of getting caught, they would get a larger quantity down.

The RCMP is noticing the shift as well said Const. Alex Borden, of the
integrated border enforcement team.

"Obviously we are aware that trucking companies are used for this type of
activity," he said.

Officials have also noticed certain companies getting caught more than others.

"I can say we are aware of it," Borden said. "We are working with American
authorities. Obviously, we pass information back and forth with regards to
things. It is our job to stay on top of trends or if we see commonalities
or things like that."

And because the Indo-Canadian community is so involved in the B.C. trucking
industry, officials are noticing more of them getting into the
drug-smuggling game.

Morgan said U.S. officials have seen a shift in commercial smugglers, away
from Hells Angels and Vietnamese gangs.

"Now there seems to be a move over to Indo-Canadians," he said. "Once these
guys get hired on, word of mouth spreads and the groups spring up and find
their own way of supply."

New sensitive scanners at the borders enable customs officials to take a
clear picture of the contents of a truck, forcing the dope haulers to be
more creative in how they hide product.

One of the difficulties for law enforcement -- and one of the bonuses for
those transporting pot -- is that whoever is involved can pass the buck to
someone else.

Drivers, if caught, blame shippers or company owners. Company owners blame
drivers. Shippers who load the trucks also claim ignorance.

"If a company's truck is used by somebody who decides to commit a criminal
offence, the truck driver uses it, that's somebody who makes a personal
decision to do that," Borden said. "There may be more than one driver who
gets involved in this sort of thing because of the money that is available
to be made in this type of enterprise."

Sidhu and Shoker were acquitted of their 2002 charges exactly because they
claimed they had no knowledge of the compartment built inside the truck.

Morgan said it is hard to know if the culprit is a driver, a shipper or a
company owner.

"Sometimes the companies are involved, sometimes the truck driver is
involved, and sometimes the truck driver is unaware what is going on
because the contraband is concealed inside the commodity, so it's the
consignee or the shipper of the commodity," he said.

He said the criminal cases are difficult to prosecute because "it takes a
lot of investigative work . . . to prove that they had knowledge. We have
to be able to prove that the truck driver had knowledge of what's going on."

Jawanda thinks an easy solution is the make sure seals are put on all loads
before a truck heads to the border. Seals are an initiative many legitimate
companies are using to guarantee their cargo has not been tampered with. If
the seal is broken, the driver must be responsible for any illegal drugs
found aboard. If the seal is intact, the owner or shipper is responsible.

Jawanda said he now has the added expense of hiring four people to load his
trucks whenever they are picking up goods on the Canadian side of the
border. Those people check the trucks thoroughly and then put the seal on
them before the driver heads for the border.

"There is no way we will take any chances because this is our living," said
Jawanda, whose company has 25 trucks.

Kulwant Dhesi, who opened a seven-truck company a year ago, thinks it is
individual drivers who are choosing illegal cargo, not company owners or
shippers.

"What can the company do if a driver takes something on when he is on the
road?" Dhesi said.

He would not like to see tougher scrutiny at the border because it would
have a negative impact on the industry.

"So many innocent drivers will be affected because we'll have to wait three
or four hours at the border," Dhesi said.

Borden said that as long as there is such a strong U.S. market for B.C.
marijuana, the smugglers will do whatever they can to get the drugs across
undetected.

"We look at it and basically the investigative theory we use is that B.C.
marijuana is going south and it gets exchanged for cocaine, drugs or guns,"
he said.

Not that traditional cross-border smuggling isn't also continuing.

Borden said there are still occurrences of individuals stuffing a single
hockey bag with pot and crossing the border on foot, hoping to go undetected.

"It's not as effective and they get caught," Borden said. "You are only
going to get one bag of marijuana across at a time if you do it like that."

People still try to bring it across in SUVs and in pickup trucks.

Earlier this month, a pot-filled pickup was spotted on the U.S. side of the
border near Sumas, Wash. by the U.S. Border Patrol.

The driver quickly turned the vehicle around when he saw authorities. But
the truck, carrying 11 hockey bags of marijuana, got stuck in a raspberry
field.

The would-be smuggler ran back into Canada and escaped.

U.S. officials seized more than 308 kilograms of marijuana from the bags,
worth an estimated $2.4 million on the street.

And just this week, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer appeared
in a Seattle courtroom after being arrested Sept. 13 while allegedly trying
to smuggle 240 kilos of marijuana into Blaine, Wash.

Corey W. Whitfield, of Point Roberts, claimed he was coerced into the
scheme by a man he met at a party. But U.S. authorities suspect he has
transported B.C. marijuana at least once before.

Sources say many of the smugglers in the industry are approaching customs
people on both sides of the border and offering them thousands in cash in
exchange for assistance in crossing the border undetected.

Criminal gangs want the pot across the border so badly because they can
sell it in the U.S. for almost four times the price they can get in Canada.
Here, a kilogram of B.C. marijuana earns its distributor about $8,500. In
the U.S., the figure is closer to $30,000.

Jawanda thinks law enforcement and government could head off the criminal
element by implementing more checks and balances in the system long before
trucks get to the border.

When trucking was deregulated several years ago, it became extremely simple
to go into the business without any prerequisites, even for someone with
criminal intentions, Jawanda said.

"They can go buy a truck right away and they can start running," he said.

Many of the newer companies are paying their drivers cash and not
completing proper paperwork, he said.

"If you pay cash to the drivers as well as fuel cash, it is going to be a
very profitable company. Nothing on paper. It is easy to launder the
money," Jawanda said. "Most of the drivers who are coming to us they want
to be paid cash and I say, 'No, we don't pay nobody money cash. We deduct
income tax and everything else.' "

Some of the companies don't even have offices or telephone numbers, raising
questions about how they can solicit legitimate clients.

"We are on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are in the Yellow
Pages, the white pages, the Indo-Canadian pages," Jawanda said. "These
companies -- there is no phone number. Nothing. How do you locate these
people."

By checking into new companies more closely, the government could spot
those with suspicious practices long before they show up at the U.S.
border, Jawanda said.

"If the government wants to stop it, they can do it," he said. "It is
hurting us, it is hurting the companies that are running properly."

Jawanda said he has seen new businesses that seemed more profitable
overnight than his is after decades.

"They must be doing something -- I don't know."

Jassi Singh, of Delta, recently left the trucking business because the
profit margins were too low. Now he sees people who used to live in
basement suites and pester him for work owning companies with several
trucks and living in luxurious homes in Surrey and Delta.

"I know that business is not that good. Here is a man who was barely making
ends meet and living in a basement suite and now has a $600,000 house and
Navigator in the driveway."