Montrealers extradited to face U.S. drug charges
Two Montreal residents were extradited to the U.S. last week and made their first appearances in a U.S. District Court in North Dakota, where they face charges alleging they were part of an international fentanyl-trafficking organization.
The pair made their first court appearance on Friday. According to a statement by the U.S. Attorney's Office, Jason Joey Berry, 37, and Xuan Cahn Nguyen, 41, are charged with conspiracy to import and distribute controlled substances. Nguyen is also charged with taking part in an international money-laundering conspiracy.
Both men have criminal records in Quebec for drug trafficking. The Canadian government ordered they be surrendered on Nov. 30.
Two other Montrealers are currently appealing orders they also be extradited to the U.S.
Their alleged accomplice, a Colombian and former Montreal resident named Daniel Vivas Ceron, 40, has already pleaded guilty in the same case and awaits his sentence at the same courthouse in North Dakota. Court documents filed in his case reveal he gave a statement to police after he was deported on July 17, 2015, from Canada when he finished serving a 19-year prison term for trying to kill four people in 2001 in a driveby shooting on Sherbrooke St. in Notre-dame-de- Grâce.
Ceron and some of the four people who were shot while they were together in a car had been at the same downtown Montreal club earlier on the night of the shooting.
The group was celebrating because their soccer team had won a tournament. Two of the victims who testified at his trial said they believed Ceron became annoyed with their celebration and followed them when they left the club.
Before he was sentenced in the attempted murder case, Ceron testified his family came to Canada when he was eight, after he lost his father, brother and an uncle to violent crimes in Colombia.
In 2015, when he finished his sentence for the attempted murders, Ceron believed he would be returned to Colombia, but the United States Department of Homeland Security made arrangements with Canadian authorities to have him turned over to them. Canadian officers escorted him on a commercial flight from Montreal that had a layover at an airport in Panama City.
During the layover, Ceron was arrested by Panamanian police and they allowed him to be questioned by U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigators at the airport.
Ceron was eventually brought to North Dakota to face charges in the fentanyl-trafficking case.
The statement released by the U.S. Attorney's Office on Friday credits several law-enforcement agencies, including the RCMP, for being part of the investigation.
It was the RCMP'S C Division, based in Montreal, that helped the DEA in the investigation that led to Ceron being charged in North Dakota. The RCMP was asked to help in the fentanyl-trafficking probe after the overdose deaths of several people in North Dakota, Oregon, New Jersey and North Carolina.
Six months after the C Division began its probe, dubbed Project Caboche, investigators realized someone was taking part in the trafficking ring from a prison cell in the Drummondville Institution, a federal penitentiary in Drummondville.
They eventually learned Ceron co-ordinated fentanyl shipments from inside the penitentiary using a smartphone and the dark web, networks on the internet that use specific software and configurations to connect people.
After the RCMP identified Ceron as a fentanyl supplier, U.S. authorities used undercover agents to make online purchases from him. In April 2018, U.S. authorities held a news conference in North Dakota announcing charges had been filed against 32 people as a result of the investigation into Ceron. During the news conference, the C Division was thanked for their extensive work in the probe.
In November 2019, five RCMP investigators — Stéphan Dufort, Karim Mahrady, Josée Pelletier, Patrick Sestier and Jacques Théberge — who were part of Project Caboche received an award for their work at the Quebec Police Awards Gala held in Montreal.
Their alleged accomplice, a former Montreal resident, has already pleaded guilty in the case.