Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor
It should not surprise anyone as British Columbia named “BC’s Criminal Superpower of the World” http://www.nowpublic.com/world/b-c-now-world-crime-superpower from my previous story that Realtors buy, sell, flip properties with the full knowledge that they are working on the behalf of criminal organizations.
As I reported in many of my Opinion pieces on Now Public, British Columbia’s lower mainland have many realtors similar to this slain realtor eager to make a lucrative buck, will eagerly help Criminals looking to launder their money by buying up properties and filling these homes with tenants in order to legitimize their holdings as their homes increase in value in which they can sell later on for a profit.
Miami during the Cocaine Cowboy days of the 70’s and 80’s pretty much mirror British Columbia’s Boom Times today. Miami was pretty much built on Cocaine profits, whereby Cocaine Cartels had a tough time finding banks willing to take their billions without alerting federal officials and federal police organizations. British Columbia seems pretty much the same.
Another aspect Criminals organizations use is to buy a home with cash from a eager realtor or mortgage broker friendly to them or owned by them as a front, then take out a equity loan on the house in order to maximise the debt on the home, then put someone in it to start a grow op or meth lab, in the event the home is raided by police, then the proceeds of crime in which the government seizes the home, finds the home is owned by a bank, hence the criminal suffers very little loss since the equity loan is long gone and so is the criminal.
In my experience here is how I see it, and I think my assumption is pretty accurate. There are cases where Asian Gangs and other Gangs (I assume under the guise of Mortgage Brokers, Loan sharks or similar Realty based companies) sell a home to someone (most likely in name only) or cheaply to a new asian immigrant to this country.
A new immigrant will little cash, means of support or job on hand to even own a million dollar home.
One can safely assume with the caveat from the criminal organization in exchange for homeownership heavily subsidized.
The Asian immigrant on the criminal organizations behalf runs a drug lab or safe house in the home , thus providing both mortgage payment cash from the immigrant, and cash from the drug lab established in the basement of the home, and if not discovered a home which will go up in value as real estate properties continue to rise almost monthly.
Certainly a win, win situation for the criminal organization. Many Drug Houses when busted, I interview the so called homeowners who are recent arrivals to Canada within the last year, who in my assessment could not hold a job of any large income to afford a million dollar home, let alone even speak the language of this country.
Many who I interview, either work as day labourers, waiters in tea houses, or in service or retail positions within their small asian community.
Certainly last time I checked, these salaries were in the range of minimum wage, or less than $12.00 an hour.
Even with 4 family members pulling in a minimum wage salary, a $5,000 dollar a month mortgage payment certainly would be hard to pay every month, when food, utilities, clothes and transportation eat up a large portion of anyones income. It is relatively easy to go to Statistics Canada to check on the median income of Lower mainland residents to see my assessment is pretty bang on, when median incomes for the most part for families is around 60K before taxes, so take a $3,000 to $5,000 month mortgage payment out of that and “Bingo is His Nameo!”
Many of these homeowners as well live in hard to find rural areas, such as Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Mission etc many with no car or means of transportation to get to a job in a nearby larger town or city where any appreciable means of income to make a mortgage payment or support could be had. Now there is another Clue for the Clueless!
Certainly if these new immigrants were to report their incomes Revenue Canada should be able to hear alarm bells, when comparing salary to home ownership costs and know the math just ain’t there.
The RCMP bless em, have more than their hands full trying to stop all this, but in a Politically Correct society such as British Columbia, where profiling is a Big NO, NO! That is one handcuff the RCMP do not have a key for. I on the other hand as an anonymous contributor do not have such restrictions.
Slain realtor connected to infamous UN gang No suspects in shooting, but RCMP says victim was known to them
Kim Bolan, with files from Mike Chouinard Vancouver Sun; with files from Chilliwack Times Friday, August 22, 2008
CHILLIWACK – A Chilliwack realtor gunned down in his car late Wednesday was closely associated with the notorious United Nations criminal organization, The Vancouver Sun has learned.
In fact, Mike Gordon, 33, had bought and sold a number of properties for the UN gang’s jailed leader Clayton Roueche, The Sun has learned.
Roueche, an accused international trafficker, is scheduled to go to trial in Seattle Sept. 8 on a series of cocaine- and marijuana-smuggling charges.
Gordon, who worked for the Surrey office of Best Bet Realty, was shot to death about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday in the 5600-block of Promontory Road in Chilliwack.
Chilliwack RCMP said Gordon was known to them and was killed in a targeted slaying. The UN gang has suffered a number of blows in recent months, at the hands of both law enforcement agencies and gangland rivals.
Gordon’s slaying comes just a month after another UN realtor, Elliott (Taco) Castaneda, was shot to death in Guadalajara, Mexico along with the gang’s Mexican connection, Ahmet (Lou) Kaawach. Castaneda had been working for Abbotsford’s Homelife Realty, but resigned from his job in June.
At his wake in the Fraser Valley city July 25, police searched mourners and seized two guns.
Tags: Canada | Vancouver | police | Abbotsford | Mexico | guns | murder | opinion | World | gangs | asian | Slaying | Castaneda | Homelife Realty | Fraser Valley | UN gang
Many realtors who will work for people who are probably wanting to buy a house to use as a grow-op. The buyers don’t say what they will actually do with the house, and the realtor turns a blind eye to their suspected purpose. The realtor rationalizes that a crime has not yet been committed (yet), and if they don’t work for the buyers, someone else will, and they want to collect that real-estate commission.