More border arrests likely Canada-Maine drug ring probed

EDMUNDSTON, New Brunswick – More arrests are likely on both sides of the Maine-Canadian border in what authorities are calling a major drug smuggling operation supplying large Northeast American cities with methamphetamine, Ecstasy and marijuana.

Police have seized more than 3,000 pounds of drugs and more than $700,000 in cash as part of an 18-month cross-border trafficking investigation that led to 13 arrests this week, law enforcement officials said Friday.

One American resident and a Canadian were arrested in northern Maine on Thursday by U.S. agents working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who arrested 11 people in New Brunswick and Quebec.

The arrests were the culmination of an undercover investigation that revealed tons of drugs were being transported from Quebec through New Brunswick to Maine. The drugs were bound for the streets of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, according to Canadian law enforcement officials.

Authorities estimate as much as 10,000 pounds of drugs a year were moving across the border through Maine for at least the past three years.

Eleven suspects – seven from Quebec and four from New Brunswick – were charged in New Brunswick Provincial Court at Edmundston on Thursday afternoon with 82 counts of drug violations involving conspiracy to export drugs from Canada, conspiracy to traffic in drugs, trafficking in illicit drugs, and possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking.

The nine men and two women were being held without bail until a court appearance at Grand Falls Provincial Court at 11 a.m. Tuesday, April 25.

Sgt. Dan Nowlan of the RCMP in Grand Falls said Friday that U.S. authorities hope to make other arrests in connection with the investigation.

Information on the arrests made in northern Maine was not available Friday. Calls were made to the U.S. Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. District Court at Bangor, the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Bangor and Portland, and the Drug Enforcement Administration in Boston.

Nowlan, the RCMP officer in charge at Grand Falls and a member of the Regional Drug Unit in New Brunswick, said more arrests may be made by the RCMP in conjunction with the U.S. Border Patrol, federal agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Bangor and Portland and ICE, an enforcement division of Homeland Security.

Canadian authorities said the drugs Ecstasy and methamphetamine are being made in Quebec laboratories connected to the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. The drugs, along with tons of marijuana, were being taken to New Brunswick where smugglers took it across the border into Maine at numerous sites from Edmundston to Perth-Andover. In Maine that is between Madawaska and Fort Fairfield.

Smugglers, Nowlan said, were taking advantage of the wide-open, easily crossed border in that area. The drugs were being transported on foot, with ATVs and snowmobiles, depending on the time of the year.

Over the course of the investigation, Canadian agents seized 3,000 pounds of marijuana, and 100,000 doses of Ecstasy and meth. A large seizure was made at an Edmundston hotel last fall. It’s all from the same operation, Nowlan said.

“The drugs being smuggled by this operation are worth millions of dollars,” Nowlan said Friday. “Quebec motorcycle gangs are involved in this.

“This stuff is being made in clandestine labs in Quebec,” he said. “This has been going on for three years.”

Those arrested Thursday, according to Nowlan, are responsible for smuggling 10,000 pounds of marijuana a year across the Maine-New Brunswick border.

The people from Quebec who were arrested were responsible for procurement of the drugs and their transfer to New Brunswick.

The residents of New Brunswick are people who have knowledge of isolated areas along the border, Nowlan said. They took drugs across the border and returned with hundreds of thousands of dollars in American currency. The money was acknowledged to be from the sale of drugs.

Others on the Maine side of the border took the contraband to major Eastern cities.

Canadians charged in court in Edmundston on Thursday afternoon were:

Bruno Ferron, 41, Montreal, Quebec; Gilles Ferron, 42, St. Calixte, Quebec; Simon Richardson, 42, Bathurst, New Brunswick; Onil Leclerc, 44, Grand Falls, New Brunswick; Daniel Comeau, 35, Alardville, New Brunswick; Helene Nancy Chiasson, 31, Bathurst, New Brunswick; Carole Sweeney, 39, St. Calixte, Quebec.; Jean Francois Tremblay, 31, St. Jerome, Quebec; Yann Lauzon, 30, Mirabel, Quebec; and Alain Godard, 39, St. Janvier, Quebec.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.