 B.C. drug dealer Tom Gisby was gunned down in a Starbucks in Nuevo Vallarta in 2012 | Mexican cartels like Sinaloa and La Familia have sent representatives to Canada to broker drug deals with local gangs. There are increasing links between Canadian drug gangs and the notoriously violent cartels. |  |
 Larry Amero | For years, local crime groups traveled south to the U.S. and Mexico to work with the cartels. Police now confirm that the Mexican crime groups have moved members north. The cartels are now bypassing the middleman say police. Metro Vancouver gangsters like Tom Gisby and Larry Amero used to travel to Mexico to make their deals. Gisby was shot dead inside a Starbucks in Nuevo Vallarta in April 2012. Amero, a full-patch Hells Angel, was arrested in Montreal in November 2012 as an alleged leader of an international drug ring that worked with Mexican cartels to import and distribute about 75 kilograms of cocaine per week. He is awaiting trial. |  Salih Abdulaziz Sahbaz of the United Nations gang was shot to death in Sinaloa in early 2012. |
 | A massive Canadian cocaine bust in 2014 dubbed "Operation Harrington" ultimately uncovered eight separate alleged conspiracies to import guns and drugs into Canada. Police seized cash, weapons, vehicles, and more than 200 kilos of coke in three days of raids.
In January, six men were arrested after the RCMP foiled a plan to import more than 200 kilograms of cocaine into the Port of Halifax via the Panama Canal. In November, 400 bricks of cocaine — all wrapped in Louis Vuitton logos — were seized in the Port of Halifax. And last spring, in the same port, 46 kilograms of cocaine were found in a commercial shipping container bound for Montreal, again originating from Panama. |  B.C. Drug dealers Gordon Douglas Kendall, left, and Jeffrey Ronald Ivans were shot to death in Puerto Vallarta in 2009. Ivans had links to the Hells Angels. |
