A Surrey man charged in connection with B.C.’s largest synthetic drug lab bust has connections to the Wolfpack gang alliance, Postmedia has learned.
Last week, Assistant Commissioner David Teboul announced the arrest of Gaganpreet Randhawa after the RCMP’s federal serious and organized crime unit searched the fentanyl and methamphetamine lab in Falkland, B.C., on Oct. 25.
The lab was the largest uncovered in Canada, Teboul said, with enough finished fentanyl and precursor chemicals on site to produce 95 million doses of the toxic drug.
He said those behind the lab had links to transnational organized crime, but did not identify the group or groups involved.
Several sources confirmed to Postmedia that the Wolfpack is one of them.
A coalition of some Hells Angels, some Independent Soldiers and some former Red Scorpion gangsters, the Wolfpack was formed in B.C. in 2011 and has expanded across Canada and internationally.
Wolfpack gangster Damion Ryan, who is also a Hells Angel, has been charged in the U.S. in a foiled murder-for-hire plot where police allege he agreed to kill an Iranian dissident on behalf of an Iranian drug lord. He is awaiting trial in Manitoba in a major drug trafficking case.
Rabih Alkhalil, an Wolfpack killer who escaped from a Metro Vancouver jail, is also believed to be operating internationally.
Another original Wolfpack member, James Riach, is serving life for trafficking in the Philippines but has been arranging synthetic drug shipments while in prison, Australian Federal Police recently told Postmedia.
Randhawa’s charges so far don’t relate directly to the super lab, which was producing illicit drugs for both the domestic market and export to countries like Australia and New Zealand.
The 32-year old was arrested Oct. 25 and charged with drug importation/exportation in Richmond on Oct. 11, as well as making or possessing explosives in Surrey on the same day.
His other charges — possession for the purpose of trafficking and three firearms counts — all related to alleged offences in Surrey on Oct. 25. Police seized 89 firearms during the investigation.
The drug-lab investigation continues and more arrests are expected, Teboul said. He also said the Falkland lab was linked to a property in Enderby where police found a huge stash of precursor chemicals, as well as a truck owned by Independent Soldiers gangster Donnie Lyons, who was shot to death in June.
The news that she lives up the road from a major synthetic drug lab was shocking to Janice Evans, who with her husband Kevin operates a bible camp called Faith Mission Canada in Falkland.
Evans told Postmedia on Monday that the buildings on the wooded acreage where the lab was found are not visible from the driveway on the dead end road. So she never noticed anything suspicious going on.
But she did say there had been more vehicles than usual over the past couple of years taking building materials past her home towards the property police raided last month.
Looking back now after the RCMP’s announcement, some things do seem suspicious, she said.
“We don’t know that this is linked, but all summer long, almost daily, sometimes twice daily, low-flying helicopters were just hovering over the bush,” she said, adding that she wondered at the time what they were doing.
Now she thinks it was the police, who had been investigating the clandestine lab for months.
“I think that they’ve been watching things for quite some time,” Evans said. “But literally, these people are professionals and they have kept things extremely quiet and private and hidden so that we did not know this was on our doorstep.”
About a decade ago, police were also investigating the same property in connection with an illegal cannabis growing operation, Evans said.
“Police showed up on our doorstep dressed in camo and asked if they could use our property to go stake out through the bush up to that property,” she said. “And so that was before marijuana was legalized. So we thought this was all over.”
She said it’s upsetting to have the image of their beautiful community “tainted by outsiders coming in and just doing something so destructive.”
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