The early morning gunshots first brought police to the rural property in the Hatzic Valley in October 2023.
They found a spray-painted message on the dark country road outside the sprawling property, more than twice the size of Granville Island.
“Fentinol,” it said — a misspelling of fentanyl — in bright orange in front of the gravel driveway to 12790 Stave Lake Rd. near Mission. Police believe an anonymous tipster wanted them to find the large-scale illicit drug lab hidden behind the chain link fence.
Officers saw barrels of deadly chemicals and called in the RCMP’s specialized clandestine laboratory enforcement and response team, or CLEAR team. The fentanyl super lab had likely been in operation since 2017, set up by an unidentified criminal organization.
A year later, nobody has been charged.
Mission RCMP confirmed this week the investigation is dormant, despite 25 kilograms of pure fentanyl having been found inside a storage building and several shipping containers, and another three kilograms already cut and ready for distribution.
“At this time, there is insufficient evidence to recommend charges on anyone and it is no longer an active investigation,” Cpl. Harrison Mohr told Postmedia.
Since the discovery of the Stave Lake Road fentanyl lab, the CLEAR team has investigated several more so-called super labs producing fentanyl and other illegal substances both for the domestic market and export.
Staff Sgt. Derek Westwick said his lab team gets called to about 10 large-scale, profit-based labs a year, most of which are now producing fentanyl.
Since China cracked down on the production of fentanyl and its analogs in 2019, Canadian organized crime has stepped up.
“We started seeing fentanyl labs in 2020, even during COVID, and that just has continued to grow,” Westwick said. “The majority of our labs now are fentanyl labs.”
And they are producing more than what’s needed for Canadian users, meaning police believe organized crime is smuggling the deadly substance out of the country.
Westwick, who’s been with the CLEAR team for 15 years, said the United Nations coined the term “super lab” years ago to describe a synthetic drug lab that is capable of producing five kilograms of an illicit drug in a 24-hour period. But he applies the term even to a fentanyl lab that produces a kilogram a day “because a kilo of fentanyl will make half a million doses.”
Westwick admits collecting enough evidence to get charges laid can be tough, especially as the criminal organizations setting up labs become more sophisticated.
In the early days of the synthetic-drug labs, producers would dump hazardous waste beside roads or in vacant lots. Police would find valuable evidence in the debris, such as shipping labels or fingerprints on barrels.
“But they learned from their mistakes,” Westwood said, adding that organized crime groups changed their methods.
“They began dumping their waste and garbage right into dumpsters … or they were stockpiling on rural properties or utilizing the city sewer drains or septic fields to conceal it.”
Even if police moved in, they would find chemical containers had identifying labels removed.
Now to get charges approved, police must gather evidence linking a lab to suspects through surveillance or other techniques.
The rarity of charges means transnational organization criminals see B.C. as a safe place to do business, said Cal Chrustie, a retired RCMP superintendent and security expert.
“People know, and I think select, Canada because strategically they know that the enterprises they’re running in the illicit markets are at minimal risk due to the legal framework,” he said.
The Stave Lake Road property is adjacent to smaller well-kept acreages, some cleared with mountain views and some more heavily wooded.
Postmedia recently visited the site, which is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence with mesh blocking most of the view inside. Some old trailers and vehicles could be seen through a gap in the fence.
“No Trespassing” and “Guard Dog on Duty” signs were posted on the gate as well as one warning visitors they’re being filmed.
There were also two notices — both dated Feb. 13, 2024 — from the Fraser Valley Regional District. One stated “no occupancy,” and alleged there had been construction without a permit on site. The other was a stop work order.
A report by the regional district said inspectors visited after the police search and found the “large shop structure and the four shipping containers were used to operate a clandestine production operation.”
“There were a number of recreation vehicles and motorhomes on the site that were being used for residential occupancy,” it said. “Staff estimated that there were between 60 and 80 derelict vehicles, contractors’ equipment, propane tanks, motor homes, water barrels, large amounts of rubbish, building materials, and miscellaneous debris being stored outside on site.”
The report also said two of the three owners had been contacted as the third had died earlier in 2023. One owner told district officials that the site, assessed at more than $2.5 million, had been rented out and they were in the dark about the fentanyl lab.
Messages left by Postmedia for one of the owners were not returned.
Hugh Davidson, a Fraser Valley Regional District director, said he “had no idea of what was going on there before the police went in.”
“We’re in a rural area with large lots and a lot of activity can happen well back not visible from the street,” said Davidson who represents the electoral area of McConnell Creek, Hatzic Prairie. “It seems pretty easy for these places to go undetected.”
He said that at the time of the RCMP search, “there was a lot of community concern around some of the chemicals that might have been left behind.”
Even though the lab allegedly produced illicit drugs for six years, Davidson said that since he was elected in 2018, “I don’t recall anything specific to that property coming before the board.”
The volume of fentanyl found there was particularly disturbing, he said.
“It’s got concerns raised around toxic chemicals making it into the watershed, making it into our water supply,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that it was fentanyl. … Historically, the illegal busts have been around cannabis. But this time, obviously, it’s way, way, way, way, worse.”
Westwick said about half the super labs are now in more remote areas, though some are still in urban settings. As the only unit of its kind in the province, the CLEAR team gets called out to labs that are found due to another crime like a shooting, or a fire.
His team also runs its own investigations targeting organized crime groups based on information police get from people in the chemical industry or from the Canada Border Services Agency.
They have had recent investigative success. Charges were laid in August against five Lower Mainland men who allegedly operated an ecstasy or MDMA super lab on a Maple Ridge property that was searched in 2022. Dennis Halstead, Shawn Cappis, Balbinder Johal, Richard Waugh and Christopher Alves face a total of 26 counts, including production of a controlled substance, trafficking and unlawful possession of chemicals and equipment.
And then there are those who provide the precursor chemicals to clandestine lab operators.
Last month, Westwick’s team searched a rural property at the end of Crossridge Road, north of Enderby.
It seized over 30,000 kilograms of chemicals that investigators believe were to be used for synthetic drug production.
Also found on the property, which features a semi-custom home assessed at $1.8 million, was a truck owned by a murdered Independent Soldiers gangster, Donnie Lyons. The 52-year-old, who had a lengthy criminal history, was shot to death outside his home near Princeton int June.
“Due to the volume of chemicals located, investigators believe the chemicals were destined for one or more large … super labs where they could have been utilized in the production of hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine,” Peter Koster, an inspector with the RCMP’s Pacific region federal policing program, said earlier this month.
Westwick said the investigation, which began in the summer, continues.
Investigating rural properties covertly can be a problem when neighbours see police in the area and start asking questions. That’s what happened near Enderby, Westwick said.
“Farmers and ranchers quickly picked us off and were confronting our officers quite aggressively, so we had to pull back and reassess how we’re going to do that investigation,” he explained.
Land title documents show the 2.6-hectare property was purchased in May 2023 by a numbered company in Ontario for $1 million, more than $800,000 less than the assessed value. The company’s Ottawa address listed on the B.C. Assessment document houses a Mexican restaurant. There is a different Ottawa address listed on corporate documents. No one from the company could be reached for comment.
Also alleged to have diverted precursor chemicals to organized crime is Lower Mainland resident Bobby Shah, also known as Bahman Djebelibak.
A year ago, Shah and his Port Coquitlam companies, Valerian Labs and Valerian Labs Distribution Corp., were among 28 sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for alleged links to an international network of companies producing fentanyl and other illicit synthetic drugs.
Shah and Valerian were major customers of a Chinese company named Jinhu Minsheng Pharmaceutical Machinery that sold pill-press machines with “pharmaceutical imprints on ecommerce platforms and has provided pill dies for counterfeit oxycodone M30 tablets,” an October 2023 news release said.
“Valerian Labs Inc. has received shipments of methylamine hydrochloride, which is a precursor chemical used to produce methamphetamine and MDMA. Valerian Labs Distribution Corp. has tried to procure 2,000 litres of chloroform, 800 litres of dichloromethane and 200 kilograms of iodine, substances used in the production of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine.”
Within days of the U.S. announcement, Health Canada suspended Shah’s “class B Precursor Registration,” which he is now fighting in Federal Court to get returned.
His lawyer said in a Sept. 10 application for a judicial review that Shah had provided evidence he was producing legitimate “Vitamin Power health products” and that it was unfair to cite “a foreign press release that contains no evidence to corroborate the claims made within.”
“The respondent has not set out any justification as to why the press release provides reasonable grounds to believe that a suspension is necessary to prevent injury to the health or purchasers or consumers.”
Postmedia recently visited the site of Shah’s business, in a Port Coquitlam strip mall at 1971 Broadway St. There were no signs on the exterior of his unit, which was locked.
Stacks of boxes sat outside addressed to Hollywood Vape Labs Inc., the original name of Shah’s company. Some of the boxes were labelled “Vitamin Power Box,” stating the product was made in China.
There were also several unsecured blue barrels labelled dichloromethane — one of the chemicals listed by the U.S.Treasury. The label said it had come from another company in China.
Reached by phone this week, Shah said only that “my lawyer told me not to engage with the media” before hanging up.
Westwick said some of those providing precursor chemicals “operate in the grey knowing that 85 per cent of the chemicals used to produce synthetic drugs are not regulated, so there’s no offence.”
For police, the challenge is “trying to prove that they are intentionally buying those chemicals and then diverting them to organized crime.”
Another challenge is quantifying how many drug labs are operating in B.C. Even as the province’s expert, Westwick can’t estimate with any certainty.
“How many labs are there? I don’t know. I only know what we take down through enforcement. There could be a lot.”
He does know that B.C. has had more than anywhere else in Canada over the past 20 years — first making ecstasy, then methamphetamine and now specializing in fentanyl production.
“B.C. has led the country on synthetic drug lab operations,” he said.
Possible reasons could be the access to ports, long sparsely populated border stretches and being “the gateway to the Pacific region for organized crime to traffic the drugs.”
Chrustie agreed there are major obstacles to investigating clandestine labs, due to the sophistication of the organized crime networks, hidden locations and intimidation of potential witnesses.
But the biggest challenge legally is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Chrustie said, because it makes it “nearly impossible to collaborate and co-operate on international investigations and prosecutions because of the Charter being so incongruent with our allies’ legal systems.”
Key players in transnational organized crime see “no deterrent” to operating in Canada, he said.
Adding extra tools for law enforcement to investigate won’t help if the foundation upon which a case needs to be built doesn’t exist, he said.
“I don’t think we have that legal foundation to take this on, and without that legal foundation, I think we’re going to be handicapped,” he said.
Despite B.C.’s Cullen Commission into money laundering and the current foreign interference inquiry in Ottawa, “everybody’s avoiding the difficult issue, and that is the legal framework. You can do all these things, but none of the dials are going to move.”
When Chrustie was a lead investigator on transnational organized crime files in the late 2000s, he saw international criminals setting up in B.C.
In retrospect, it’s clear “the players that were showing up in Vancouver were not designed or structured for the Canadian market,” he said.
“The people that were showing up in Vancouver were designed for global operations, not for Vancouver operations.”
Chrustie believes nothing is going to change in B.C. “until there’s a shift culturally and politically to accept the realities that fentanyl traffickers and producers are knowingly, wittingly, poisoning kids.”
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