Little Italy homicide victim had served time for drug conviction
Philipos Kollaros was convicted in 2015 plot to smuggle cocaine, sources say
The man who was gunned down inside a restaurant in Little Italy Tuesday night had recently completed a sentence for his role in a plot to smuggle a large amount of cocaine into Canada. Two sources familiar with the investigation have confirmed reports that it was Philipos Kollaros, 38, who was shot while inside Café Cubano, a restaurant on Beaubien St. E. near the corner of Casgrain Ave. At least one suspect is believed to have fled the scene in a getaway car parked in an alley. The victim was declared dead Wednesday morning after having been taken to a hospital in critical condition. On Dec. 14, Kollaros was left with a one-day prison term after he pleaded guilty at the Montreal courthouse to being part of a conspiracy to an estimated $25 million in cocaine into Canada. The charges where filed in Operation Harrington, an investigation by the RCMP that uncovered several plots to smuggle drugs into Canada, mostly through the use of undercover agents. The undercover agents uncovered so-called dry-conspiracies where no drugs actually entered Canada. Kollaros, a Montreal resident, was arrested, in 2015, and was charged in two separate cases filed in Operation Harrington including one where he was charged with Ryan James Wedding, 37, a former member of the Canadian Olympic snowboarding team. Wedding was never arrested in Operation Harrington and a warrant is still out for his arrest. When Kollaros entered his guilty plea in December he was sentenced to the time he had already served behind bars, the equivalent of a four-year prison term, and was left with one day to serve as a formality. The charges filed in the other case were stayed on the same day he entered the guilty plea. Jahanbakhsh Meshkati, an Alberta man who was listed as an non-indicted co-conspirator in one of the Project Harrington cases filed against Kollaros, was murdered in White Rock, B.C. in August 2014. According to a statement of facts read into the court record when Kollaros entered his guilty plea in December, the RCMP became interested in him after Meshkati was killed. While under investigation, he eventually began exchanging encrypted messages with an undercover agent who pretended to be someone who could handle the transport by ship of large quantities of cocaine. The pair also exchanged encrypted messages with Gary Christopher Meister, a Nova Scotia resident with ties to organized crime. While Kollaros and the undercover agent were continuing to make plans with Meister, they also met in Toronto and made additional plans for a second conspiracy, the one for which Wedding is sought. Kollaros is believed to have met with Wedding and the undercover agent in Montreal, on Jan. 7, 2015, and began the plot to smuggle as much as 500 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. Arrests in Operation Harrington were made soon after this meeting. Meister, the brother of a member of the Canadian Coast Guard, was sentenced to an overall eightyear prison term for his roles in the plots uncovered in the RCMP investigation. The murder is the 25th homicide recorded this year in Montreal.