Two Canadian gangsters’ big plans as narco bosses undone by undercover sting down under

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Two Canadian gangsters with big plans for an international narco empire worked cautiously, so much so they launched aerial drones to check for police surveillance before meeting to swap cash for drugs.

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They still missed a trick.

Over 18 months of vetting a new partner at face-to-face meetings in restaurants and bars in Thailand, Panama, Colombia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, they didn’t realize he was not the gangland gatekeeper he appeared to be.

He was an undercover police officer from Australia.

By the time that startling fact was revealed, it was over for the burgeoning narco boss, Van Hieu Le, and his right-hand man, Barry Ho, along with nine others in their drugs and dirty money ring.

Le and Ho, both 34 and childhood friends from British Columbia, have been convicted in Australia for their leading roles in a multi-million-dollar network involving corrupt officials, crooked businessmen, Colombian cocaine producers, Vietnamese money launderers and the sophisticated logistics of moving cocaine half-way around the world.

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On Jan. 19, in a courtroom in Melbourne, Australia, Le was found guilty of two charges of conspiracy to import a commercial quantity of border-controlled drugs and sentenced to 17 years in prison, with no chance of parole for 12 years. He also forfeited his Honda SUV.

On the same day, Ho was found guilty of the same charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison, with no chance of parole for 10 years and four months.

Both men are 34 years old.

The pair are the last to be convicted in a vast Australian police operation that thoroughly penetrated their gang, and then shut it down in 2017 with a series of raids and arrests that scooped up suspects, drugs and money.

Le, from Burnaby, and Ho, from Vancouver, have been friends since they were teens.

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They had been criminally active together for 15 years, with Le being the senior figure, as they slowly built an enterprise with an impressive global footprint, sources said.

They used Panama as their fulcrum.

Not everything went smoothly for them. They learned an underworld reality: that gangsters are not always honest brokers.

In August 2016, they paid traffickers in Panama to load 100 kilos of cocaine into a shipping container, but the hired help decided to steal the drugs instead. The Canadians flew to Australia to collect their anticipated load but found nothing.

With help from a successful businessman in Australia, and others, they figured things out. They dealt directly with a Colombian cocaine producer and acted as both a broker for others and as a direct importer for themselves, according to sources with knowledge of the case.

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They paid government officials to help them, sometimes with cash and sometimes with cocaine, as drugs were sent out by air and sea, using the names and addresses of legitimate companies to avert suspicion from customs.

But as they expanded their network, the Australian undercover agent tracked everything he could — from their source for drugs to how they moved their money.

Before their arrests, Le and Ho arranged for three heavy duffel bags to be slipped into a shipping container in Panama, hidden among legitimate cargo being sent to a frequent importer, and then a replica of the container’s seal put in place. The container was loaded onto the Spirit of Shanghai, as one of hundreds of containers aboard the enormous transport ship headed for Melbourne, Australia’s busiest port.

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The ship arrived on June 26, 2017, and the container was sent for inspection.

Each of the black bags held 26 bricks of cocaine that together weighed 92 kilos. Police estimated the load had a value of about $30 million Australian dollars.

The find sparked 12 police raids across Melbourne, as well as arrests in other countries.

About $580,000 in Australian cash was seized in the raids, mostly in neatly stacked $50 bills. Authorities seized property, cash and other assets worth $2.6 million Australian dollars, according to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). That is worth about C$2.3 million.

Two other Canadians were arrested alongside Le and Ho in the multi-national cast of the plot. The two men were charged the month before with trafficking 22 kilograms of cocaine.

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They were joined by a British man, six Australian men and a Vietnamese woman, police said. Some were arrested abroad and extradited to face trial; some charged for drug offences and some for money laundering.

All but one, a Canadian man, were convicted.

Between all the members of the gang, police said, prison sentences totalled 98 years.

“This result sends a strong message to illicit organized criminal groups,” said AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Chris Salmon. He said international police partnerships were key to the operation’s success.

There have been several high-profile Canadians found to be in the thick of drug smuggling into Australia.

In 2018, two Canadian women were caught with suitcases full of cocaine on a cruise ship that stopped in Australia. Their $30 million load was the largest found on a passenger ship in the country, but a trove of glamor photos the two women shared on social media along their luxurious trip sent the story viral.

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In 2017, a National Post investigation exposed Yaroslav Pastukhov, a music editor at Vice Media better known under the name Slava Pastuk, for recruiting young musicians, models and former Vice interns to work as drug mules to smuggle coke in their luggage on flights to Australia.

Four Canadians and an American were caught at Sydney airport with nearly 40 kilos of coke in their suitcases. All were convicted, and Pastukhov himself was convicted in Canada in 2019.

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