http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2018/01...e-pot-quebecois

A criminal gang inundated the United States with Quebec pot


ÉRIC THIBAULT
Update Friday, 19 January 2018 01:00
A Montrealer who would have helped a daring network of smugglers to export for $ 1 billion in Quebec pot will have to go to court in the United States.

Leslie Grant just learned that the Supreme Court's Jordan decision to reduce judicial time in Canada "can not be applied in the context of an extradition request" like the one he's been doing. object since his arrest in 2014.

In making this decision last week, Judge Guy Cournoyer ordered the incarceration of the 38-year-old man until he was escorted to Albany, New York, where he risked 20 years of jail.



"Iron strainer"

Grant, who lived in Pierrefonds, was one of the last targets of the DEA (Iron Enforcement Administration) "Iron Curtain" operation, which led some fifteen Quebeckers to the American courts.


They were all accused of transporting drugs or money to a criminal organization that flooded the East Coast of massive amounts of "Quebec Gold" between 2006 and 2009.

Clearly, the "Iron Curtain" at the border looked more like a colander. Every week, this network raised between 500 and 900 kg of Canadian marijuana in the northern United States, for a potential turnover of $ 1 billion over four years, according to court documents obtained by Le Journal .

The drug was camouflaged in hockey pockets carried by convoys of pickup trucks or snowmobiles. They often crossed the border through the Akwesasne Mohawk Reserve.

Cocaine in reverse

Drivers who preceded the procession without carrying anything were instructed to warn their accomplices by radio when they saw patrol boats or on purpose for the police to intercept them, so that the smugglers have the free way.

Paid just $ 1,000 off the trip, Quebec "couriers" were also going to collect from American traffickers their employers' share of pot sales in New York and Boston.

Part of this money was reinvested "every week" to order California associates from the network of "dozens of kilos of cocaine" to Montreal.

In addition to transporting her husband, Grant reportedly brought in $ 182,000 in dirty money and 25 kg of cocaine in Quebec, according to prosecution witnesses.

The DEA strikes, however, seem to have wreaked havoc within this underground smuggler.


Leslie Grant

A DEA officer alleges that in the spring of 2012, Leslie Grant allegedly fired at the alleged "number 2" in the network, Mihale Leventis.

"He thought that" Rookie "[leventis nickname] had the contract to kill him at the request of a member of the Irish underworld," wrote the agent Michael Norian in writing.

Murder contract

According to the SPVM, Leventis escaped an attempted murder at Cavalli Restaurant on Peel Street on November 9, 2011. Grant denied these allegations before Judge Cournoyer. Detained in Montreal, Leventis challenges his extradition in the Court of Appeal.


Jeffrey Colegrove
Detainee
The DEA alleges that the leader of the network would be Montrealer Jeffrey Colegrove, whom she associates with the Irish underworld. Colegrove is not charged or targeted by these extradition proceedings. He is serving a 12-year penitentiary for possession of a kilo of cocaine in Montreal.

► An investigation by the Journal , published in February 2015, established that the fugitive Elisabeth Barrer, 32, who was shot dead in Lachine in the spring of 2014, was linked to this organization. His murderer is still running.

OPERATION IRON CURTAIN
In the United States, the network reportedly moved between 450 and 900 kg of Quebec pot per week, from 2006 to 2009, up to 180 tonnes in four years.
The price of their pot pound ranged between $ 2,300 and $ 3,700, for potential annual revenues of $ 300 million.
The leader of the "couriers" of the network, Steven Sarti, of Brossard, 23 years old at the time of his arrest in 2009, was sentenced to 64 months of incarceration.