Canada’s west coast was being used and abused by 메이저사이트 organized crime for years, and how it is finally being exposed. Let me tell you about it The province of British Columbia on Canada’s beautiful west coast is in the midst of a reckoning, facing how it allowed its popular casinos to fall under the spell of transnational organized crime, particularly at the destination casinos around metro Vancouver It was so successful in moving money that the way it was done became known around the world as the “Vancouver Model.
” Much of it, according to allegations, involved this man: Paul King Jin. But we’ll come back to him in a moment. First the money; hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable money was being pushed through cashier slots at B.
What you see 메이저사이트 here is an actual video of some of those transactions. Patrons walked in with plastic bags, suitcases, and grocery bags filled with bands on bands on bands — wads of stacked cash, bricks of bills, held together by elastic bands The money was hardly ever refused.
One former head of security said if a customer had identification he could only think of a couple of times the cash was turned away — once when it was covered in blood another when it was partially burned.
Links between suspicious money and Asian organized crime were clear by 2008. How bad was it? One head of casino security investigations said his team couldn’t do much to stop the patrons, investigate them, or even ask them where the cash was coming from because the gangs were too strong and confronting them too dangerous.
Here it is, in his words: “You couldn’t ask the service provider to give notice to one of your investigators with a large amount of cash comes in the door, let us know so we can come in and interview the person. That’s beyond your capabilities as special constables?” “Yes, because they are associated with organized crime and we can’t investigate organized crime or any other protections we have.
” “But you could go in and speak to the people.” “Patrons often had someone with them and, again, nearby there was usually somebody that was that was there just to watch over.” The use of government-licensed casinos for money laundering is currently under public scrutiny.
A commission of inquiry is underway. It is known as the 메이저사이트 Cullen Commission, named after its commissioner Austin Cullen, a B.C. Supreme Court justice. A major theme that’s emerged is the innovative use of casinos to meet the needs of two groups, both of which have a money movement problem.
First, there were the drug gangs and crime groups in Canada, choking on the cash flowing in from their activities They need to find a way to launder it, meaning to metaphorically clean it up so it looks like money earned through legitimate means that can be invested without triggering police investigations or government asset seizures.
The second group were foreign high rollers, usually visiting wealthy Chinese citizens who love to gamble in Vancouver but couldn’t bring their money with them, after China imposed money export rules to stem the tidal wave of capital flight.
In the casino industry they call these compulsive gamblers “whales” and casinos want whales more than I want your clicks This is how the Vancouver method worked: A patron is waiting outside a casino for men who are identified as members of a criminal organization.
A gangster arrives with two plastic bags full of cash and the two go into a restaurant beside the casino to try to avoid the casino security cameras The bags of cash change hands quickly And as the gangster drives away, the patron now carrying the bags walks into the casino He strolls through the gaming floor to the VIP cashiers and plops them on the counter to exchange them for casino chips.
Here’s the top-down view from the casino’s cash cage Each of these bundles is about twenty thousand dollars most are twenty dollar bills some are the fifties so there are 200,000 dollars here.
Here’s a second transaction. This guy also collects bags from someone he met outside, or perhaps in a washroom where there aren’t cameras The cash cage view of this transaction shows it’s much more significant, with more fifty dollar bills And a third one, this reusable shopping bag gets dumped out on the counter by the cashier Under a newspaper cover out tumbles half a million bucks And finally, here’s a million dollar transaction.
Two men carrying two bags — and they look heavy And this happened over and over, almost every day, for years. The scheme shows the ingenuity and global reach of the gangsters. Casinos at first threw up their arms and said it couldn’t be money laundering because these whales are losing most of their money during their gambling binges They’re walking out of there with almost nothing, not with clean checks that can be deposited into a bank, which is the usual endgame in the laundering service.
What was happening was something more sophisticated. The gamblers — the ones going into the casino with the bags of cash — weren’t there to launder the cash, they just wanted to play.
But for those coming from cash-restrictive countries such as China or Iran, they can’t bring suitcases of their cash, like they used to So they pick up the cash in Vancouver. They first must pay for it by moving the money from their bank account in China to another account within China, one that’s controlled by the gangsters in Canada or by their associates.
Once the gangsters in Vancouver get word that the money has arrived in China, they give the patron the equivalent amount in Canadian cash, which is allegedly the proceeds of their crime.
The money in essence moves between countries without ever crossing a border The Cullen Commission has heard allegations that much of the money was linked to Paul King Jin The 51-year-old Jin is described as a well-known loan shark.
He is suspected of deep ties to gambling and to the running of an underground bank — the kind of underground bank used to facilitate the Vancouver method of money laundering. Jin is a former championship boxer from China, according to reporting by my friends and colleagues at the Vancouver Sun He immigrated to Canada in 1989, living first in Montreal then in Toronto, before settling on the west coast.
He opened a spa and later a large gym, fitness, and boxing club He became a Canadian citizen a few years after arriving here. Police found more than four million dollars in cash in a safe in his apartment in 2015, and he once told an officer “My name is money.
” Jin seemed concerned about what might be said about him at the Cullen Commission, so much so he asked for standing so his lawyer could be involved during the inquiry process. Jin seems to have more to worry about than the testimony.
In September 2020, just before live testimony at the Cullen Commission was set to focus on casino cash, Jin was shot at in what was called a targeted attack at a Japanese restaurant in Richmond, BC.
Jin survived, but a man he was with, described as his associate involved in money laundering, died. That man ran a massive underground bank that faced prosecution in a massive money laundering probe, called Project E-Pirate, but the case collapsed in 2019 before being prosecuted in court.
The bank had 메이저사이트 ties to China, Mexico, and Colombia. Jin still faces civil forfeiture actions by the province, targeting his gym. He has denied the allegations against him After weeks of testimony on the casinos, a picture emerges of gaping holes in regulation and enforcement, of a reluctance to risk hurting profits by cracking down on suspicious transactions, and of ignorance — perhaps willful ignorance — to what was going on The Cullen Commission hearings continue.