EX-REALTOR JAILED IN U.S.
B.C. man linked to gangsters
A B.C. man connected to the Wolf Pack gang alliance has been sentenced to two years in a U.S. prison after admitting to international money laundering.
Omid Mashinchi, a former Vancouver realtor who was leasing high-end condos to Lower Mainland gangsters, pleaded guilty in July to moving cash across the border for Canadian drug gangs.
On Wednesday, he was sentenced in a Boston courtroom to 24 months in jail and ordered to pay almost $30,000 US in fines and damages.
U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton also added a year of supervised release to Mashinchi’s term, which he could apply to serve in Canada.
Mashinchi was charged in a sealed indictment in January 2018 and arrested in April, when he flew to the U.S. to visit family. He has been in custody since then.
U.S. court documents said that Mashinchi transferred funds from a bank in Vancouver to a bank in Boston over several months in 2017, knowing that the money — almost $240,000 US — was derived from drug trafficking.
Postmedia revealed in June that Mashinchi was facing money laundering charges and had been linked to condo leasing to gangsters.
One of the those condos, a penthouse in North Vancouver, was leased to Brothers Keepers boss Gavinder Grewal, who was murdered in the suite at 1550 Fern St. last December.
No one has been arrested in Grewal’s murder, but in June, the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team released images of suspects from surveillance videos near the apartment building.
Other condos and houses Mashinchi, 35, had leased out to unsavoury clients were targeted in drive-by shootings or were being used as stash houses for drug trafficking, police told Postmedia.
The sealed indictment originally filed against Mashinchi says that he knew the funds he was wiring “represented the proceeds of crime” and “that such transportation, transmission and transfer was designed in whole or in part to conceal and disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership and the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity.”
The underlying crime alleged is “the manufacture, importation, sale and distribution of a con- trolled substance.”
No gang affiliation is named in the U.S. documents, but police confirmed to Postmedia that he is aligned with the Wolf Pack, a coalition which includes some members of the Hells Angels, some Red Scorpions, and some in the Independent Soldiers gang.
It has been locked for years in a deadly gang conflict with rivals from the United Nations gang and the Dhak-Duhre group. Gangsters on both sides have been slain, while others have been charged with murder and conspiracy.
Mashinchi has not yet faced any drug trafficking or money laundering charges in B.C. He was named by Vancouver police in August as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major drug trafficking operation called Project Territory linked to the Brothers Keepers and Red Scorpions.
Several of his associates were charged.
In announcing the charges, VPD Staff Sgt. Lisa Byrne spoke about the underworld leasing service that Mashinchi had been operating.
“My team found this really disturbing because we had rival gang members housed within dozens of metres of each other and the potential for spontaneous violence and gunplay was obviously something that was super concerning to us.”