DRUG SMUGGLERS TAKE TO AIR

Helicopters Becoming Craft Of Choice For Cross-border
Gangs

A $50,000 payday looked easy for 29-year-old Jeremy Snow of
Kelowna.

With a little helicopter training, he says, he was recruited to fly
B.C. bud into the U.S. and hook up with a cocaine connection for the
return trip to Canada.

He never got his money.

Shortly after taking off from Kelowna's Okanagan Mountain Helicopters
without a licence, Snow was arrested when he touched down in a forest
in northern Idaho with 80 kilograms of marijuana. He was sentenced in
U.S. District Court in Seattle earlier this month to just under four
years in jail for his part in a cross-border drug-smuggling ring.

Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office, told The
Province a report was filed into the case record detailing the ease
with which B.C. pilots are trained for drug-smuggling runs. Helicopter
flight-school operators don't check students' backgrounds, and
criminal-record checks aren't required for licence approval.

Smuggling by chopper is a "very serious" border-integrity and
public-safety issue, Langlie said.

Sometimes the pilot trainees drop out of school once they know just
enough to handle the machines. Johannes Vates, chief flight instructor
at Okanagan Mountain Helicopters, said Snow raised no suspicions, even
when he dropped out several weeks before completing his four-month,
basic-training course.

Sam Lindsay-Brown, 24, another B.C. pilot, was allegedly involved in
the same ring as Snow. He was arrested in February after landing near
Spokane with a load of marijuana and ecstasy. Four days later he hung
himself in the Spokane County jail.

Lindsay-Brown started training at Chinook Helicopters in Abbotsford in
December 2007. Like Vates, Chinook Helicopters owner Cathy Press says
little can be done to check on students. An employee of the school,
who asked not to be named, said: "Sam was super. None of the other
students could believe he was involved in smuggling." Michael
Chettleburgh, an author and expert on drug crime, told The Province
choppers are increasingly being used for smuggling by gangs that are
flush with cash from a $6-billion-to-$8-billion annual cash crop of
B.C. bud, which is traded for cocaine, heroin and guns. "The
helicopter is a growing tool for gangs," Chettleburgh said. "We're
standing there with our pants around our ankles saying, 'We'd better
get some more regulations.' It's organized crime versus disorganized
police and authorities like Transport Canada." There is a strong
appetite for B.C. bud in the U.S., said RCMP Cpl. Richard De Jong,
adding grow-ops "continue to be the No. 1 source of income for
organized crime" in B.C.

Chettleburgh said crime groups see the border as "very porous" and
only lose about two per cent of total narcotic shipments to
enforcement. He noted crime groups are also increasingly accessing
northern B.C. communities by chopper, and trying to cultivate more
domestic customers outside the Lower Mainland.

The employee said students, mostly males aged 20 to 30, are warned not
to get sucked into the "easy money" of drug-smuggling schemes.
Nevertheless, muscular, tattooed students who might appear to come
from the drug culture are not turned away, she said.

The employee said it's well known in the flight-school community that
the eldest of the notorious Bacon gang brothers, Jonathan, was trained
at B.C. Helicopters in Langley.

An employee at B.C. Helicopters, who asked not to be named citing
security concerns, told The Province that Jonathan Bacon enrolled
before new owner Mischa Gelb took over several years ago. Bacon wasn't
up for the serious study involved, and quickly dropped out, the
employee said. "There has been a thing with shady characters that come
through and don't last," he said.

Even when staff have strong suspicions in such cases, "with rights and
privacy laws, it's hard to do a background check," the employee said.
"We have a joke about 'my-rich-uncle' students. A 20-year-old drives
up in the [Cadillac] Escalade and comes through the door and pays
cash. Can we deny them? There's no laws and rules in place." Asked
what officials are doing about it, Rod Nelson of Transport Canada
said: "Transport Canada works with the RCMP when it suspects that
aircraft are being used in criminal activities . . . if any violations
are found, we can order immediate corrective action or take
appropriate punitive actions." But he conceded: "Having a clean
criminal record is not a requirement for obtaining a pilot's licence."