North Van gangster charged with assault, unlawful confinement
But the 29-year-old man is believed to have left the region
A well-known North Vancouver gangster is wanted for allegedly extorting, assaulting and unlawfully confining a man last month.
The charges were laid against Mohammad Masood (Mo) Rahimi on April 23 after an investigation by Vancouver police into an incident that occurred April 1.
But Rahimi, 29, has yet to appear in court on the three counts and is believed to have fled the region.
His co-accused on the extortion and unlawful confinement charges is a woman named Teal Ashbury Hayden, who was reported missing to Vancouver police by her landlord last month.
The VPD briefly had a missing persons’ bulletin posted about Hayden online, but has since removed it.
No court appearance has been scheduled for Hayden either, according to the provincial court online database.
Vancouver police media officer, Cont. Brian Montague, said he was unable to comment on the investigation or the charges laid.
“The file has been privatized so I don’t have access to it. Unfortunately that also means the investigators are not able to share any details,” Montague said in an email.
He said “there could be many reasons” why a criminal file has been privatized, but he didn’t know the reason in the latest Rahimi probe.
Rahimi and his brother Milad vanished for several months last year and police in B.C. received information that they had been killed in Thailand. The reports ended up being false and the siblings returned to the Lower Mainland last fall. Both are well-known to police. Mo Rahimi has convictions for drug trafficking, assault causing bodily harm, dangerous driving and unlawful confinement.
He was convicted in a violent Surrey home invasion in 2007 and then later faced similar charges in connection with a Vancouver kidnapping.
But the Vancouver charges were dropped without explanation in 2008.
In 2009, North Vancouver Mounties described Rahimi as “upper middle management” in the drug trade.
He was close to Omid Tahvili, who escaped from North Fraser Pretrial while awaiting trial for kidnapping and to Sam and Milad Abdolhossein Zadeh, two gang brothers ordered deported a decade ago for serious criminality.
He also had an affiliation at one point with a North Vancouver gang called the Red Lions.