Judge rejects accused trafficker's extradition to U.S.

A B.C. judge has refused to extradite a Vancouver man accused of sending fentanyl to the U.S., in a case where two sailors in Georgia died of overdoses several days after the alleged shipment.

In a B.C. Supreme Court ruling posted this week, Justice David Crossin said the application from the Southern District of Georgia on the federal charges failed to provide supporting documentation within the time limit set out by law, after Thomas Michael Federuik was arrested in Canada on behalf of U.S. prosecutors.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms dictates that an extradition application must be supported by documentation about the case within 60 days of a wanted person's “provisional arrest” in Canada.

Due to a clerical error, U.S. prosecutors missed the 60-day deadline by two days. Nonetheless, Crossin ruled that extraditing Federuik despite the brief delay would amount to a charter violation and that the application can't proceed.

The judge said the U.S. must restart the extradition process against Federuik rather than continue with the existing request, even though Crossin's ruling concedes the two-day deadline error “seems insignificant, if not trivial” in practical terms.

Federuik and another suspect from Surrey, England, were charged with drug and money laundering offences in Georgia in June 2022. Prosecutors in Georgia claim the “international operation used the dark web to distribute illegal drugs in the U.S., with some of those drugs resulting in the deaths of two U.S. navy petty officers.”

The charges could result in a minimum of 10 years to life in a U.S. prison, along with fines of up to US$10 million and a minimum of five years on parole.

U.S. prosecutors allege Federuik was a dark web vendor who imported drugs from places like China and Hungary before shipping the deadly doses to Georgia.