Ferraris worth $1m stolen in Ontario were seized by police near Edmonton and charged are our boys. Vicky (Vick) Mander, 35, is charged with two counts of fraudulent concealment and two counts of uttering a forged document. He was bailed out. Sheldon Gaspard Poirier, 31, is charged with four counts of possession of property obtained by crime, illegal possession of government documents, possessing a weapon contrary to an order, failing to comply with release conditions and fraudulent concealment. He remained caged. Boys appeared in court on Sept. 28 at the courthouse in Leduc.
W5 says the RCMP hasn't questioned money-man Vick Mander, and passengers have not been questioned either. This after the flight crew was detained for 8 months. Former RCMP investigator Gary Clement says he can’t understand why the RCMP is silent about a conspiracy to smuggle hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Canada. "This is not a complicated case." Crimes are conspiracy to import cocaine, money laundering, and proceeds of crime.
The corruption unveiled at the Punta Cana Airport has also been ignored by authorities.
Sheldon Gaspard Poirier
Pivot Airlines, a charter company based in Toronto, received an email sent by John Strudwick, the CFO of purported real estate investment firm Trust Capital. It was on the second charter trip in April when the Pivot Airlines crew discovered more than 210 kg of cocaine in the avionics bay of their plane. Multiple wire transfers showed that about $150k had been sent to Pivot through a numbered company in B.C. A corporate records search revealed that the director of that company was Edmonton resident Vick Mander.
In Feb 2019 Vick Mander spoke of his cab driver father, Balwinder Mander, 54, who was assaulted. “That’s when the guy kind of woke up and said, ‘Why’d you bring me here?’ and started wailing shots”
Passenger Sheldon Gaspard Poirier was billed as an employee. He was linked to Mander and had a possession for the purpose of trafficking conviction in Alberta in 2020. W5 background checks on the remaining passengers from both flights chartered by Trust Capital found others with checkered pasts. Four of the 11 passengers from both flights had a history of being busted dealing drugs.
Pivot Airlines handed over all the information it had on Trust Capital to the RCMP. No charges have emerged thus far.
YYZ@signatureflight.com
On the day that the flight was supposed to leave Punta Cana for Toronto, a manager at Signature Flight Support in Toronto contacted the Pivot Airlines’ CEO, asking him about the flight, saying the aircraft needed to go in for service the next day. Pivot Airlines found this strange. W5 video Here.
Omid Mashinchi has been hit with a lawsuit by the B.C. government seeking forfeiture of more than $190k in cash, high-end cars and jewelry. On March 16, VPD raided Mashinchi’s condo at 1011 West Cordova St. and found $191,010. They seized six Rolex watches and one Patek Philippe watch, two necklaces, three bracelets, keys to a Mercedes, a money-counting machine, score sheets for drug trafficking, three cellphones, a cryptocurrency wallet, and GPS tracking devices.
In the storage locker for his unit, cops found fentanyl, more than 78 kg of MDMA, and more than 15 kg of meth. Also in the locker were four handguns.
Omid Mashinchi and fugitive Mo Rahimi
Omid Mashinchi last appeared here after being busted for money laundering in the U.S. Mashinchi has associated with B.C. gangsters for years, including leasing condos that were used both as stash houses and as residences. Mashinchi's leasing operations continued during his incarceration. Despite complaints that he was leasing 3rd party properties in buildings that didn't allow rentals, websites continued to send customers to Mashinchi's 'Residence Club'. It operated out of a townhouse at 867 Richards, three doors from a similar unit that Mashinchi bought for $1.5m.
B.C.’s anti-gang cops have come across Mashinchi and his properties often. For years Omid Mashinchi was associated with the Wolf Pack.
He was a realtor with the Royalty Group from April 2009 until June 2016, when he gave up his licence. Despite not having a licence, Mashinchi continued to lease condos through the 'Residence Club'.
Pablo Rodriguez, co-founder of AirBit Club — a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that swindled investors of over $100m — has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy charges in March. Rodriguez preyed on unsophisticated investors with false promises that their funds were invested into legitimate cryptocurrency trading and mining operations. The convict was ordered to pay a forfeiture of $65m and to forfeit other items, including a total of 3,800 Bitcoin worth $100m. Rodriguez’s Irvine residence in California, $900k in cash seized from the property and nearly $1m previously held in escrow for a Gulfstream jet. Other defendants have also pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
AirBit Club launched in 2015.
Investors were told that AirBit earned returns on trading and cryptocurrency mining and that they would earn guaranteed returns on their membership. By 2016, those wanting to withdraw money were met with excuses, delays and hidden fees and were told they must recruit new members to receive their money.
AirBit Club victims could view their “balances” on an online portal but the numbers were all fake and they couldn't withdraw funds.
Frank Hanebuth, the German leader of a Hells Angels chapter that had established itself in Playa de Palma has been acquitted by the Audiencia Nacional High Court in Madrid. On July 23, 2013, Hanebuth and 24 others were arrested in an operation dubbed Casablanca. Hanebuth's Hells Angels chapter was in the business of drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion and prostitution. He spent two years in prison and was released on conditions in 2015. Able to travel to Germany, he was welcomed back as if he were a head of state.
35 of the 49 defendants took plea deals. The highest sentence request among those who did not take the deal is for the Youssafi brothers. Prosecutors asked for extended time for Abdelghani Youssafi and his brother Khalil Youssafi. Frank Hanebuth was the only defendant who used his right to a final statement before the trial was adjourned Friday. The gang's operations were at Playa de Palma, where brothels were used to finance its network.
After a week break, the trial against Frank Hanebuth and others resumed on Monday (February 6th) in Mallorca. Of the initial 49 accused, only 15 are now left after the remaining 34 made deals with the public prosecutor before the trial began on the first day of the trial. Many converted their sometimes long-term imprisonment into fines.
Lawyers accuse the prosecutor's office of having almost no evidence against the accused. It is based on assumptions and arbitrary interpretations of the many phone calls between those involved. Whether this wiretapping was permissible at all was a frequent issue on the first days of the trial. The public prosecutor's office justified them by saying that the Hells Angels on Mallorca represented a criminal organization.
Frank Hanebuth along with 46 others will be in court until Feb 10, including Germans, but also Spaniards, Turks and Luxembourgers. In November 2009 the Youssafis brothers opened a branch of the Hells Angels in Majorca, led by German Frank Hanebuth. Their lair was a luxury property in Lloret de Vistalegre, valued at 2.5m euros. Hanebuth is looking at 13 years.
Valerie Gaytan is jailed for stashing away $2.3m in drug money. Gaytan and Lopez turned over $4.2m in drug money in August 2010 and claimed it was all that remained from their husband's trafficking. Gaytan stashed millions more with the twins’ brother, Armando Flores.
When they were charged in 2021 with money laundering related to their husbands' millions, the Flores wives filed a motion to dismiss, claiming the government promised them immunity. ‘Cartel wives’
Vivianna Lopez, 42, and Valerie Gaytan, 47, wives of Pedro and Margarito Flores, admitted to involvement in a conspiracy to launder millions from their husbands’ drug trafficking business after the men were taken into federal custody.
The cartel wives used drug money for lavish trips in 2018 and 2019, flying to Las Vegas for a Jennifer Lopez concert and to the Turks and Caicos islands, Dubai, Greece and Italy. The wives blew $20k to $30k in cash per trip. The money came from anonymous sources in the mail. In 2010, Gaytan turned over $4.2m in drug proceeds to the government, but she didn’t hand over everything. Millions in cash was sent to her brother-in-law Armando Flores.
Gaytan faced more than 11 years in prison under sentencing guidelines.
Drug money paid for schools for children, Lopez’s student loans and even her $3,100 exercise bike. She faces 9 years. Gaytan and Lopez both agreed to the government’s forfeiture request of more than $500k in cash.
The Flores twins learned the drug trade from their father. By age 17 they were the largest cocaine dealers in Chicago.
El Chapo was convicted in 2022 and sentenced to life.
Margarito and Pedro Flores operated a cocaine franchise in Chicago on behalf of Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman. Pedro Flores told a federal jury they returned over $800m to the Mexican cartel. The Flores got 14-year sentences in 2015 but were released into the witness protection program in 2020. The twins imported tons of cocaine from 2005 to 2008.
The Flores brothers operated in Chicago's Little Village.
The Flores sold 38 tonnes of El Chapo’s products to 30 major customers using an army to move both drugs and money.
In the fall of 1920, the leader of a violent gang, Salvatore “Sam” Cardinella, was convicted of murdering a barkeeper. Cardinelli led one of the most dominant Black Hand gangs in Chicago prior to Prohibition. That year, Chicago City Council passed a daylight saving ordinance saying the city's clocks must adhere to the time change. Cardinella’s gang had a hand in at least 20 murders and hundreds of robberies.
Sentenced to death by hanging on April 15, 1921, Cardinella came up with a last ditch effort to save his neck from the hangman - daylight savings time. He got his extra hour, but was then hanged at 10:26 a.m. on April 15, 1921.
Edward G. Robinson shot to stardom in the role of Rico, loosely based on mobster Salvatore ‘Sam’ Cardinella, in Mervyn Leroy’s Little Caesar and Public Enemy (1931)
Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro's condition deteriorated and after a short time in a ward at L'Aquila's San Salvatore hospital, he died. The intestinal surgery he underwent on August 8 was successful but the mobster has advanced colon cancer and it is progressing. He was in intensive care in hospital for a month. God should have no difficulty with this black soul.
Diabolik, 61, was caught in January at a Palermo cancer clinic after 30 years on the run.
Matteo Messina Denaro, 61, once dubbed 'the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia', is too sick to be in prison, according to his lawyers. In January, Messina Denaro was busted on his way out of a private clinic, where he was being treated for cancer under the false name of Andrea Bonafede. He was operated on for colon cancer in 2020 and 2022. The bloody mafia boss has stage four cancer. This means that the cancer has spread. One wonders how Matteo Messina Denaro's foul soul will fare in the afterlife.
Messina Denaro was being treated for cancer at Palermo's La Maddalena private hospital.
Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested at a clinic in Sicily after 30 years on the run. He will be jailed for two bombings in Sicily in 1992 that killed anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Falcone's wife and their bodyguards.
Denaro was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders.
Messina Denaro, Diabolik, is one of the successors of Bernardo Provenzano, who was arrested while in hiding in a farmhouse outside Corleone, Sicily, in April 2006. Messina Denaro was born to a Mafia boss in Sicily on April 26, 1962.
The Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación - CJNG) has been increasing the production and sale of illegal cigarettes in Mexico through a group known as the Tobacco Cartel - Cártel del Tabaco. The Tobacco Cartel makes cigarettes and forces vendors to sell them. Business owners and distributors of other cigarette brands were given fake letters from government departments that state cigarette brands other than those distributed by TIH are illegal and cannot be sold in Mexico. The Federal government says no such letters exist. It is run by three brothers who own cigarette factories in the State of Mexico, Jalisco and Campeche. Production is carried out under three companies, Sijara International Manufacturing, Braxico Manufacturing and Burley & Virginia Tabaco Company. The first two are subsidiaries of Tobacco International Holdings. (TIH)
Since 2017, stocks of other cigarette brands have been destroyed and vendors have been threatened, tortured and shot for not complying. TIH is a “Swiss-founded company for the exclusive purpose of having the rights of the brands registered in Mexico.” Those brands, Laredo, Botas and Económicos among others, are all much cheaper than better-known cigarette brands.
The illegal cigarette business is growing rapidly in Mexico. “Seize and destroy operations” of non-TIH smokes have been carried out by municipal, state and federal police, according to people targeted by them. The head of the Tobacco Cartel is thought to be Carlos Cedano Fillipini, a former police officer who has worked with several federal agencies including the Attorney General’s office. Known as 'El Rambo', he has links to the CJNG.
In Michoacán, the Tobacco Cartel has distributed flyers to small grocery stores stating that by order of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, only TIH cigarette brands could be sold. The gang produces over 30 cigarette brands, with prices as low as 35 pesos (about $1.75). The price of branded cigarettes is between 62 and 70 pesos. ($3.17-3.58) Mexican-made illegal cigarettes are becoming more popular. About 19% of cigarettes consumed in Mexico are illegally produced, up from 2% in 2011. The registered owner of TIH is José Guadalupe Varela González. He was investigated for drug trafficking in 2006.
