Record drug seizure at Coutts
99.5 kilograms of cocaine valued up to $8M on the street found in truck
Ahusband and wife have been arrested and charged in connection with the largest ever drug bust at an Alberta border crossing.
A man and woman hauling a commercial load of produce from California to Alberta were stopped at the Coutts border last Saturday. Border officers searched the cab of the truck and found 84 bricks of suspected cocaine weighing 99.5 kilograms, considered the largest suspected cocaine seizure recorded by Canada Border Services Agency officers in Alberta’s history.
Before this incident, the largest CBSA cocaine seizure in Alberta was 92.74 kg, also intercepted at Coutts Oct. 10, 2016.
An RCMP spokesman said the drugs seized last weekend are worth between $6.5 million and $8 million on the street depending on how they’re broken down for sale. A media spokesperson for the CBSA said the drugs would provide on the street between 100,000 and 200,000 hits.
The driver and passenger of the commercial vehicle were arrested and turned over to the RCMP, and Monday police charged Gurminder Singh Toor, 31, and Kirandeep Kaur Toor, 26, of California with two counts each of importing drugs, and drug possession for the purpose of trafficking.
“Had this quantity of illicit narcotics made its way into our communities undetected, the impact could have been devastating,” Kim Scoville, regional director general of the CBSA said in a news release issued Friday. “The CBSA is truly Canada’s first line of defence, and this record seizure is a prime example of how frontline officers are actively protecting Canadians every day.”
They say they found 84 bricks of what they suspect is cocaine in the cab of the truck.
The bricks weighed almost 100 kilograms. Officers found none hidden inside the large crates of fruits and vegetables inside the trailer.
Coutts is about 100 kilometres south of Lethbridge. It's a busy 24hour border entry and sees a prolific amount of truck traffic.
“There certainly is a lot of trucks that come through Coutts and it's like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Guy Rook, director of operations in southern Alberta, said.
“In this case we found that needle due to the training and dedication of our front line officers. They look at indicators and make the decision based on that to then search. We're very thorough.”
The truck’s driver and passenger were arrested and turned over to the RCMP.
RCMP Insp. Allan Lai would only say the shipment was destined for somewhere in the Calgary area. He said the drugs likely would have been shipped to other provinces once it was processed.
The two accused appeared in provincial court Friday by closed-circuit TV from the Lethbridge Correctional Centre, and were represented by Calgary lawyers Kim Ross and Michael Oykhman.
The couple were released from custody on each posting $10,000 cash bail. They were also ordered not to leave Alberta, to provide authorities with any travel documents, report weekly and in person to the RCMP, live at a specific address in northwest Edmonton, and not possess any weapons or explosives.
Although granted bail, court was told the two accused may not be released from custody right away because they are also being held by immigration authorities.
Their next court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 19.