https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2018/08/27/caid-des-hells-aux-crochets-de-letatWhile producing pot for the Hells Angels, a boss from Estrie pocketed nearly $ 100,000 from the Quebec government as a "victim of crime" unfit for work.
This super-villain, Guy Boucher, will now have to reimburse the government for the $ 97,415 in financial assistance he has received "fraudulently" for two and a half years, the Quebec Administrative Tribunal ordered last week.
The 54-year-old former crane operator, who was shot in a bar in 2007, convinced health professionals and the government that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, preventing him from to work.
Anxious and agoraphobic, the resident of Cleveland said he lived "locked up" in his bungalow rife with surveillance cameras and protected by a watchdog.
Nicknamed Gus in the underworld, he received a tax-free annual allowance of $ 38,000 paid by the taxpayers, before being unmasked in the police operation Kayak.
The relief of the Hells
Between 2011 and 2013, the Regional Joint Organized Crime Squad and the Sûreté du Québec targeted the next generation of Sherbrooke Hells incarcerated in Operation SharQc.
Boucher controlled the sale of drugs in certain areas of Estrie and paid 10% of the revenues to the bikers when he was trapped by a dealer in the pay of the police.
The "mole" bought him 9000 tablets of methamphetamine and recorded it without his knowledge, including in a bar located inside a building that belonged to the wife of Boucher in Richmond.
Guy Boucher had built a marijuana greenhouse in an old barn in Weedon, Estrie. Lit by 70 lamps, the greenhouse had a thousand pots to grow as many cannabis plants every two months.
PHOTO COURTESY
Guy Boucher had built a marijuana greenhouse in an old barn in Weedon, Estrie. Lit by 70 lamps, the greenhouse had a thousand pots to grow as many cannabis plants every two months.
Boucher, who claimed to have produced $ 1.5 million worth of marijuana in 2011, suggested that the infiltrator use a cannabis greenhouse in a barn in Weedon.
In order for the site of this pot factory to remain secret, Gus would have the workers drive them in a van by blindfolding them.
Stressed by crime
Arrested in June 2013, Boucher was sentenced to 45 months imprisonment for gangsterism, drug production and trafficking.
Upon leaving prison, he sued the state in court after being cut off his disability benefits.
Police also seized $ 12,000 and a Hells Angels calendar from his home in Cleveland when he was arrested in 2013.
Justices Lucie Le François and François Gauthier however concluded that "all the evidence" of the police investigation "clearly contradicts" the medical reports of this "very organized" trafficker.
If Boucher was anxious, it was because of his "illegal activities," the court said.
Guy Boucher, who bragged about having no property in his name to avoid foreclosure, declared bankruptcy last year. Revenu Québec, which claimed $ 1.4 million, recovered a portion of its debt under agreements whose details are confidential.
WHAT THE POLICE INVESTIGATION REVEALS
Guy Boucher spent "most of his time outside his home" negotiating drug sales price agreements, collecting thousands of dollars from his traffickers or planning marijuana production projects.
On more than one occasion, he said that he would not hesitate to use "violence to maintain his position in the hierarchy of drug trafficking".
Despite the illicit income he says he has, he boasts of having no property in his name, such as his wife's $ 640,000 cottage in Magog, to be "untouchable" in the event of a seizure by the police or tax department.
"Calm and in control" after his arrest, he calls his spouse from the prison to reassure her and tell her that even if he is detained, "everything is fine" since they "both have health".
WHAT BOUCHER AND HIS PSYS SAID
Since surviving a murder attempt in 2007, psychologists have diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder with panic attacks.
Here is an enumeration of his symptoms: anxiety, hypervigilance, depression, agoraphobia, insomnia, repeated nightmares, loss of libido and difficulty concentrating.
"He says himself and seems completely exhausted", does "very little activity" and seems "unable to function", according to the psychologist who followed him between 2012 and 2013.
After his arrest, he unsuccessfully asked a judge to release him on bail, arguing that his "medical condition" prevented him from remaining in prison.
