(Before It's News)
By Chivís Martínez for Borderland Beat
Canadian Drug Kingpin , Jimmy Cournoyer, with Ties to the Rizutto and Bonanno Crime Families, the Hells Angels and the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel Plead Guilty in 2013 to Narcotics Trafficking Crimes Carrying Sentence of 20 Years to Life and $1 Billion in Forfeiture.
However, U.S. feds are now seeking a 30 year sentence, arguing that a lighter sentence would amount to little incarceration time for Cournoyer, due to the fact he has elected to spend his sentence in Canada. Canada has a very liberal probation system that would drastically cut actual time spent behind bars.
Pointing out that Cournoyer “had a cadre of high-priced lawyers in Canada and the United States working to intimidate and threaten underlings into not cooperating with authorities. Various lawyers helped monitor several criminal cases related to Jimmy Cournoyer's massive cross-border drug trafficking network, probing for tips about investigations, warning co-conspirators against testifying and even offering 'bribes,' pay-offs and 'implied threats of harm to themselves or members of their families,' prosecutors allege.”
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| Cournoyer feared his 1.2 million dollar Bugatli would draw attention from law enforcement |
French Canadian Jimmy “Cosmo” Cournoyer was living the life Chino Antrax thinks he had.
A Canadian “narco newbie” at the age of 21, and until his arrest at age 33, he developed a billion dollar marijuana business operating a business with associates such as the Hells Angeles, Sinaloa Cartel, New York’s Bonnano Crime Family while being back by Montreal’s Rizzuto mob (Vito Rizzuto below left).
Cournoyer was part of an operation with the mafia on both sides the US/Canadian border that involved in a vast cross border trafficking that channeled Canadian ecstasy and weed to New York, then using the profits in purchasing Mexican cocaine, which was shipped back to Canada.
U.S. Federal prosecutor Steven Tiscione stated “the illegal narcotics distributed worldwide by members of the criminal enterprise have a retail value of more than $1 billion… conservatively.”
U.S. charges the Cournoyer network specialized in growing and distributing potent hydroponic marijuana harvested in British Columbia.. The marijuana was then transported by Hells Angeles, in motor homes and trucks, across Canada.
By 2009, he sent at least 1,000 pounds of hydroponic cannabis a week to New York, most of it to a Bonnano associate.
The biker gang and the Montreal mob then smuggled the marihuana from Quebec into upstate New York, where trucks delivered it to a warehouse in Brooklyn, authorities and sources said.
Cournoyer gained his $1-billion drug empire by “gaining control over ports and customs checkpoints through a combination of covert operations and outright political corruption” and abusing “sovereign tribal lands” on First Nations’ reserves “that are almost impossible to police,” prosecutors claim. They further claim he maintained a 2 million dollar execution fund, used to eliminate known or potential informers.
Cournoyer was apprehended by Mexican police on Feb. 16, 2012 when he landed in Cancun for a planned vacation.
Cournoyer’s Brazilian-Canadian model girlfriend, Amelia Racine’s (at left) jailed brother, Mario Racine, was reported to be acting as the kingpin’s trusted lieutenant.
U.S. is seeking 800 million dollars in forfeiture
Source:
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/07/possibly-30-years-for-canadian-narco.html
