Mounties in B.C. say they’ve arrested three men in Surrey believed to be tied to a transnational organized crime group connected to Mexican drug cartels, while four others suspected of trafficking large quantities of drugs, including diverted prescription pills, were arrested in Burnaby.
RCMP federal investigators said on Sept. 23, police searched a Surrey home that was surrounded by compound fencing, steel gates and razor wire, and arrested men allegedly involved in importing cocaine to Canada.
They said officers also seized 23 firearms, several thousand rounds of ammunition and “multi-kilos of illicit drugs” from the house.
The arrests in Burnaby, B.C., meanwhile, stem from a four-month investigation into interprovincial drug trafficking that included executing search warrants in nearby Coquitlam and Surrey, police said.
They said officers seized more than 9,500 hydromorphone pills believed to be diverted prescription pills, as well as other substances including more than a kilogram of suspected cocaine.
The group was allegedly shipping the drugs as far as Manitoba and Yukon, as well as locally, police said.
The announcement of the seizures follows RCMP’s claim that it had busted the “the largest, most sophisticated drug superlab” ever seen in Canada in the B.C. Interior.
At that time, RCMP said they had evidence that the site was being used to make methamphetamine using P2P (phenyl-2-propanone), something not previously seen in Western Canada but common among Mexican cartels.
Police in British Columbia say they’ve dismantled the ‘largest, most sophisticated drug superlab’ in Canadian history, confiscating 89 guns and hundreds of kilograms of drugs. Andrew Chang breaks down information from the RCMP and drug manufacturing experts about what makes this lab so sophisticated and how far-reaching this criminal network might be.