Canada's cocaine cowboys: How a two-year RCMP sting led all the way to Mexican kingpin El Chapo

It was March 12, 2015, and Stephen Tello was having second thoughts.

The following day he was due to meet a man called Joe at a steakhouse in Toronto. Joe was a transportation broker who, for the right price, had told Tello he could smuggle huge amounts of cocaine into Canada. He could have drugs collected at sea in the Caribbean, he said, before swapping them onto fishing trawlers closer to Newfoundland, for safe passage to harbour.

The two had met before, but their first deal hadn’t worked out. Now Tello, who lived a double life as a Toronto real estate agent and an underworld player, was getting suspicious. He had seen “weird cars” last time they met, he texted Joe. This time, he said, they should park in separate areas before taking cabs to the meet-up. Joe made no objections, and awaited Tello’s next move.

Slowly, Tello had become the key piece in a complicated puzzle, and Joe was the person tasked with putting that puzzle together. His working title was in fact “UCO Joe,” and he was the lead undercover agent in a two-year RCMP sting codenamed Operation Harrington.

He could have drugs collected at sea in the Caribbean, he said, before swapping them onto fishing trawlers closer to Newfoundland, for safe passage to harbour.

Joe followed the clues from Canada’s east coast to the nightspots of Montreal and Toronto. Before long, the trail led much further south, to the Caribbean and Colombia. Eventually, RCMP realized it led all the way to Mexico and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, who in July 2019 would be sentenced to life by a Brooklyn judge for running a $14-billion empire, in the process becoming one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins. The RCMP noticed, too, that Canadians who entered El Chapo’s orbit kept ending up dead. Tello, as it would turn out, survived, by the skin of his teeth.

Using court documents from three countries, what follows is a reconstruction of a twisting tale that ran from Canada to Mexico’s murderous Sinaloa Cartel, before looping back to Brooklyn for some final, chilling revelations at El Chapo’s landmark trial.

Catboy

By the fall of 2014 Stephen Tello, 39, had a lot going for him. The Quebec-raised, former Concordia University student had a young family, a job with RE/MAX in Toronto, and an address in the city’s Upper Beaches.

One person who knew him back then described him as a “total, complete gentleman,” someone “you would never believe” was involved in crime. But behind the façade, Tello was moving cocaine with very dangerous people, one of whom was allegedly El Chapo. Tello even had his own underworld alias, it was said: “Catboy.”

Tello was first noticed by authorities after Nova Scotia RCMP, in May 2013, zeroed in on Halifax criminal Gary Meister, whom they suspected was moving drugs into Canada. To infiltrate Meister’s circle, the officer known as UCO Joe pretended to run a sailboat brokerage with heavy connections, and Operation Harrington was born.

Joe’s yarn about moving cocaine from the Caribbean to Canada using a research vessel and fishing boats — the same tale he would later feed Tello — was music to Meister’s ears. He had a brother in the Coast Guard, he told Joe, who knew the comings and goings of 25 government boats and four government planes. It was a perfect match.

On July 17, 2014, at the port of Halifax, Meister and Joe met with Meister’s brother Delbert on the Edward Cornwallis Coast Guard icebreaker. They wanted to bring cocaine into Canada by sea, they told Delbert. The Coast Guard quartermaster would act as lookout, he said, and for this help, Joe handed Delbert $5,000. Some months later, Delbert began to make himself useful, or so he thought. The Coast Guard, he warned, was watching Hailey’s Joy, one of Joe’s fishing boats. In reality, the RCMP owned Hailey’s Joy. Joe was using the boat as a prop.

The criminals all communicated using encrypted BlackBerry devices and soon they trusted Joe so much, they gave him one of his own. Gary Meister put Joe in touch with players in Halifax, Montreal and elsewhere, and Tello’s name soon arose.

In October 2014, Tello messaged Joe, thinking he was messaging Meister. When Joe clarified he was Meister’s “transport guy,” Tello didn’t miss a beat. Could Joe help him to move “sea cans” through any open “door” in Toronto or Montreal, Tello wanted to know.

With that, the undercover cop watching Meister had his sights on a new target.

A few months later, on Dec. 10, Joe met Tello at the Real Sports Bar near Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, and explained how his legitimate transport business provided ideal cover for running drugs from the Caribbean. Joe didn’t come cheap. He charged as much as one-quarter of all drugs moved, he said, and overland transport — he moved his drugs in trucks from east to west — could run into the millions.

Tello’s own cocaine mostly came from Colombia and Venezuela, he told Joe, and at some point indicated his Colombian relatives controlled ports in that country. As if to prove himself, Tello immediately offered to sell Joe a kilo of cocaine. One day later, an RCMP officer known as UCO Steve, masquerading as Joe’s “agent,” took the kilo from a Tello contact in the parking lot at the Sandman Hotel, near Pearson airport.

He told Joe that if his research boat could get to Margarita Island, a Venezuelan territory, he had something “very interesting”: at least 5,000 kilos of cocaine.

Just as he had with Gary Meister, Joe strengthened his bond with Tello. An early test soon arrived when, in a panic, RCMP realized that instead of the agreed $47,000, UCO Steve had handed over just $46,000 for the kilo; $1,000 had been left on top of a photocopier as they recorded serial numbers. But Tello just laughed it off. He had bigger fish to fry, and told Joe that if his research boat could get to Margarita Island, a Venezuelan territory, he had something “very interesting”: at least 5,000 kilos of cocaine.

They next met on Jan. 8, 2015, at Bier Markt, a Montreal bar. This time Tello brought Mathew Fleming, who ran an Extreme Pita franchise in Ottawa. Fleming also flitted between separate worlds. By day he was a lauded school volleyball coach and a mentor to his young staff. By night, he used underworld contacts to work cocaine deals. Fleming told Joe he was trying to sneak 30,000 kilos of cocaine off of Margarita Island, and if Joe could take 15,000 kilos to Canada, then great. Joe said he didn’t fancy Venezuela, and moved the conversation farther north, to an Antigua pickup. The meeting was recorded and photographed, and Joe even handed Tello back the missing $1,000, just to keep things square.

On the back of this meeting, Joe, Tello and Fleming decided to start with a relatively small shipment into Newfoundland, and build their way up. On Jan. 20, 2015, Joe and another RCMP officer, UCO Bob, flew to the Bahamas. There they met Fleming, who introduced them to “Ray,” a representative for a cocaine supplier. A deal — 3,000 kilos sourced in Guyana for an Antigua pickup on March 1 — was struck.

Clipped

Back in Canada, on Feb. 11, Joe next met Tello at the Intercontinental Hotel’s Signatures restaurant, in Toronto’s upscale Yorkville neighbourhood. It would turn into a long night of carousing, but Tello was sullen. Fleming had told Joe that he and Tello were throwing $2 million each at the “joint venture,” but now Tello said his financial backer had been “wacked.” He meant Cuong “Andy” Hoang, a drug trafficker shot dead in Calgary on Jan 29, 2015. “He got clipped, so that put a huge dent in things,” Tello later said.

As gangsters shuffled in and out, Joe was introduced to figures linked to Middle Eastern organized crime, the Wolfpack criminal alliance and other groups. From the Proof Bar at the Intercontinental, the group moved to the Brass Rail strip club on Yonge Street, and then back to the Hazelton Hotel. When he finally got to bed that night, Joe did so with a significantly expanded contact list.

The web of connections was growing, but by Feb. 15, the RCMP agent still hadn’t received a promised $250,000 deposit for his services, and he kicked up a fuss. To keep him sweet, Tello arranged to get Joe two kilos of cocaine — total value $102,000. The bricks were handed to UCO Steve by Fleming himself, in the same hotel parking lot as the earlier handover. Unaware of his blunder, Fleming went back “down south” to firm up the March 1 deal with the Guyana gang.

The agreement for the pickup was for the two groups to contact each other by satellite phone or VHF radio. The Guyana crew would send a fishing trawler towards Antigua; Joe would send his research boat. If the “fishing” was “good,” they would meet at their preferred co-ordinates. But after this run-through, the Guyanese let it be known they were suspicious of Joe, and were wary of committing more than 1,000 kilos unless Fleming and Tello delivered more cash up front. By March 4 trust had wilted, Tello and Fleming had no more money to offer, and everything was off.

Someone needed “to get dealt with,” a seething Tello messaged Joe.

Enter El Chapo

At Tello’s 2017 Toronto trial, an expert testified that in 2015 a kilo of cocaine went for $2,200 in Colombia. In Canada, that kilo fetched $45,000 to $65,000. In theory, 1,000 kilos could generate at least $42.8 million, before expenses.

Tello, court documents suggest, had contacts who dealt in such figures, and on March 6, 2015, he came up with a Plan B to make up for the Guyana flop. What about their mutual contact Philipos Kollaros, he asked Joe. Could he load Joe’s boat with a few hundred kilos in Antigua, as a last resort?

Tello was right, Joe knew Kollaros, a Montreal trafficker known to work with El Chapo. In partnership with the Cifuentes-Villa crime family from Medellín, El Chapo sourced cocaine in Colombia and moved it north by sea, land, air and even tunnel, using many springboard countries and outlandish smuggling methods to get drugs to Canada. Kollaros, who struggled to keep a low profile, had even been seen in Montreal with the wife of El Chapo’s right-hand man, “Alex” Cifuentes-Villa, Le Journal de Montréal would later report.

Joe had first dealt with Kollaros back in mid-2014, after introductions were made via Gary Meister’s network of criminals. Among other deals, Kollaros had talked to Joe about bringing cocaine from St. Kitts to Montreal, via Newfoundland. Kollaros had also introduced Joe to Ryan Wedding, a Thunder Bay snowboarder who competed for Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Living within a stone’s throw of Kollaros in Montreal’s downtown, Wedding had forged his own links to El Chapo, and it was a good thing he didn’t know Joe was a cop. He had “shown indications of being anti-police and confrontational when dealing with police,” RCMP would later point out.

But after mulling Tello’s suggestion to use Kollaros for a backup run, Joe said no thanks. He’d call off his boat until things were better organized. On March 13, 2015, Joe, Tello and Fleming were due to gather at a Canyon Creek steakhouse in Toronto, to clear their heads and plot their next move. But when the day came, Tello never showed, and Joe would never hear from him again.

After 145 days of communication, the paranoid Catboy went silent.

The Misty B

For some reason, Tello’s absence didn’t spook the group. Unaware of how close the house of cards was to collapse, they continued plotting with Joe.

In early April 2015, Joe began working with Fleming and Michael Dibben, a Montreal criminal, on a new deal to move cocaine using the same Guyana-Antigua route. On April 8 Joe met Dibben in person, and agreed that on April 15 they would move 400 to 500 kilos. Joe would be notified once a supply boat left Guyana on its way to Antigua for the pickup, Dibben said. But the supply boat, the Misty B , never made it. On April 17, 2015, the French navy intercepted it near Antigua — right where Joe had repeatedly nudged the traffickers. There were 212 kilos of cocaine on board.

At around the same time, in Colombia, Gary Meister finalized a 1,200-kilo deal with Ivan Betancur-Alzate, a trafficker from the western city of Cali. With Joe and another RCMP agent present and recording, Betancour-Alzate said a supply ship would be ready to meet Joe’s boat at sea by mid-May, 2015.

Returning from Colombia, Joe then met the Meister brothers on April 19, at an A&W outside Halifax. He thanked the Coast Guard officer Delbert for that first heads-up over the fishing boat Hailey’s Joy, and said he was glad Delbert was making sure they “wouldn’t do 25 years in jail for a boat filled with coke.” “Yes, Coca-Cola,” Delbert said. No, it wasn’t Coca-Cola, Joe replied, likely for the benefit of his recording device. For acting as lookout on the new Colombia deal, Delbert pocketed another $3,000.

The next day, the RCMP launched co-ordinated Operation Harrington raids. Police wanted to follow the traffickers for longer, but unspecified events elsewhere forced their hand. Arrested at home, Delbert sheepishly said he had spent $300 at a Canadian Tire, but gave back the rest of the cash that Joe had handed him the day before.

Led by the RCMP’s Federal Serious and Organized Crime unit, helped by the FBI, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and other organizations, Operation Harrington had unearthed conspiracies to bring cocaine into Canada from Antigua, Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, the U.S. and elsewhere. Fifteen people faced 45 charges in its wake, including cocaine importation and trafficking, and weapons trafficking. Harrington suspects had talked of moving up to 15 tonnes of cocaine, but the Misty B haul was in fact the only shipment seized. In the other conspiracies, no drugs changed hands.

RCMP said at the time that Harrington had “ties” to Colombian and Mexican cartels, while offering no details. It would take the landmark trial and conviction of El Chapo in Brooklyn four years later, and revelations about Tello in particular, to bring Joe’s puzzle a bit closer to completion.

Russian Mike

It remains unclear how closely American and Canadian agencies were working, but the DEA had its own El Chapo-focused agents in Canada as it scoured Mexico to find the kingpin through 2013. The Americans constantly monitored encrypted BlackBerrys used by the Sinaloa Cartel, and these intercepts showed El Chapo worked with Iranian-Canadian gangs, the Hells Angels and others groups, according to DEA agent Andrew Hogan’s 2018 book Hunting El Chapo , written with Douglas Century.

Hogan said El Chapo, by 2013, was making more money from cocaine in Canada than the United States. The economics were simple, Hogan said; a kilo of cocaine fetched at least US$10,000 more in Canada than it did in L.A. or Chicago.

And as Operation Harrington was getting underway, Tello had already been pointed to, by the Americans, as a key and longtime part of this Canadian network. A separate 2014 indictment by the Southern District of New York had charged Tello, El Chapo, and El Chapo’s henchman Alex Cifuentes-Villa with importing cocaine into the U.S. between October 2008 and January 2014. Also charged was Toronto trucker Mykhaylo Koretskyy, known as “Russian Mike.”

Though unsealed in July 2015, Tello’s U.S. indictment was not discussed at his 2017 Toronto trial or 2018 sentencing. Tello’s alleged five-year relationship with El Chapo would raise eyebrows when belatedly revealed in January 2019, but what came next was a bigger bombshell. Later the same month, Alex Cifuentes-Villa took the stand at El Chapo’s trial, turning against his old boss. As he outlined the scale of the Sinaloa Cartel’s Canadian wing, he placed Tello at the heart of the action.

The Cifuentes-Villas had worked with Colombia’s Pablo Escobar in the 1980s as Escobar, funded by cocaine, brutalized a nation. Later, among other alliances, the family partnered with El Chapo. Alex moved to Sinaloa in 2007, he said, and was to stay in Mexico roughly six years, while his brother, Jorge Milton, sourced cocaine for the Sinaloa Cartel along the Colombia-Ecuador border. Living for periods with El Chapo in mountain hideouts, Alex looked after the cartel’s cocaine when it reached New York and Canada. This involved getting product into the hands of northern distributors, then getting the cash proceeds back to Ecuador to repeat the buying cycle.

They moved heroin and crystal meth as well as cocaine, Alex said, mentioning deals with the Montreal Mafia. Along with helicopter drops over the border from the U.S. to Canada, he said loads went from Ecuador via the Pacific into Vancouver. When drugs went to the U.S. overland from Mexico, they would often be dropped off in L.A. and Phoenix before being collected by trucks bound, in winding routes, for Canada.

Alex said Tello had been his main “worker” in this country, and said the RE/MAX agent even ventured to Culiacán, El Chapo’s fortress city, for meetings. They made “dozens of millions,” from Canada, but by 2013, Alex was receiving “many complaints” from El Chapo that Tello “was stealing the product or the profit of the drug sale.” This information, Alex said, came from other cartel workers in Canada. In El Chapo’s world, that was a death sentence, so the plan was to get Tello to return to Mexico so he could be killed on location. Tello, though, smelled a rat, much as he did in March 2015 at the end of Operation Harrington. He wouldn’t go back.

Keen not to let the boss down, Alex said the Hells Angels were then contacted to murder Tello in Canada. But luckily for Tello, Alex was captured in Mexico at the end of 2013, and El Chapo was caught the following year. After a July, 2015 prison break, El Chapo was detained for the final time in January 2016. Tello lived through it all, and in July 2019 when El Chapo was sentenced in Brooklyn, Tello’s name was listed among the kingpin’s victims and would-be victims.

Coal boats

Alex’s testimony had now linked one Operation Harrington suspect to El Chapo, and the indictment of Tello’s fellow Canadian Koretskyy indicated further ties. Documented connections were sparse. However, as a way to raise cash as their March 2015 Guyana deal crumbled, Tello had spoken to Joe about a project using “divers” and “coal boats,” documents show. And the National Post has now learned that a separate RCMP investigation, codenamed Operation Owatcher, was ongoing at the same time as Operation Harrington.

Tello’s charge sheet from Owatcher, obtained by the Post, shows he was suspected of working with El Chapo, Alex Cifuentes-Villa, the Toronto trucker Koretskyy, Gary Meister and an Albertan gang associate, Jahanbakhsh Meshkati, to import cocaine by coal boat from Colombia to Canada between May 1, 2013 and Sept. 1, 2013. Tello was specifically charged with “enhancing the ability” of El Chapo’s cartel to operate in Canada, while the others listed on the sheet were unindicted co-conspirators. Tello’s Owatcher charges were stayed in September 2016, with sources telling the Post the probe floundered when a key witness stopped co-operating.

Though a suspect in both Harrington and Owatcher, Koretskyy was never arrested over either operation, and in fact wouldn’t be detained until years later, in January 2018, when he landed in Curacao after flying to the Caribbean island from Toronto. Extradited to the U.S. in June 2019, he is soon set to stand trial for his own links to El Chapo. He’s accused of running cocaine from Mexico to Canada through the U.S., crossing north at border spots such as Buffalo. U.S. authorities believe he “likely” set up a trucking company just for smuggling.

Bloodshed

With RCMP photographing the thousands of messages the gang had sent to Joe’s encrypted BlackBerry, this text trove, as well as in-court testimony from undercover officers, was used to bring down the gang. In Crown applications to have officers shielded from public exposure at Tello’s Toronto trial, it was pointed out that Tello, Kollaros and the Thunder Bay snowboarder Wedding were tied to “one of the most powerful and dangerous drug organizations in the world,” the Sinaloa Cartel.

Tello himself, of course, had been in grave danger since 2013.

On Aug. 10, 2014, Meshkati was shot dead in a daylight attack in Burnaby, B.C. The murder came soon after Joe had begun “working” with Meshkati, another of the RCMP’s early Harrington contacts, to import cocaine into Canada. The Owatcher documents confirm Meshkati was linked to El Chapo since at least 2013.

Then there was Cuong “Andy” Hoang, Tello’s money man, brazenly shot dead in a quiet Calgary suburb on the morning of Jan. 29, 2015.

It was also pointed out that Bassam Elouta and Alyas Rahimi, two criminals who first met Joe in Toronto on the gangland night out, had allegedly discussed potential Montreal and Ottawa murders with a separate RCMP officer posing as a hitman.

On top of this, RCMP suspected that a member of the court’s public gallery tried to photograph officers as they spoke at a preliminary inquiry. Orders were granted that concealed the officers’ appearances from public view. Public galleries were moved to a separate room as they testified, and the recordings of their voices were put under seal.

But though Harrington’s detectives were shielded, its suspects continued to be stalked.

By Nov. 6, 2018, Philipos Kollaros had been out of prison almost one year, having been given four years, backdated to his arrest, on his Harrington charges. He was sitting in Café Cubano, in Montreal’s Little Italy, when an assassin pumped shots into Kollaros’s upper body before scurrying to a getaway car waiting in a nearby laneway.

In Brooklyn, El Chapo’s trial had just begun.

Operation Harrington: Convictions, let-offs and loose ends

• Stephen Tello: Convicted by a jury of one count of conspiring to import at least 1,000 kilos of cocaine, two counts of trafficking cocaine, and one count of possessing the proceeds of crime, in April 2018 he was given 15 years in prison, less time served.
• Mathew Fleming: In January 2018 he was given 16 years, less time served, after being found guilty of plotting to import 400 kilos of cocaine. He had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to import at least 1,000 kilos.
• Michael Dibben: In September 2017 he was given 12 years, less time served, after admitting conspiring to import 400 kilos of cocaine.
• Gary Meister: Given eight years in prison, he said he regretted dragging his brother Delbert into the Harrington mire, which cost the Coast Guard member his job.
• Delbert Meister: Given a conditional sentence of two years less a day, community service, and 18 months of house arrest for breach of trust, he avoided prison.
• Darlene Richards: A Department of National Defence employee at 14 Wing Greenwood in Nova Scotia, she faced similar charges to Delbert Meister for helping the gang. The charges were later stayed, and she was eventually fired from her role in July 2017.
• Ivan Betancour-Alzate: In 2018 he was extradited from Colombia to Canada and received seven-and-a-half years in prison, less time served.
• Normand Joseph Pomerleau: Caught in the same Colombia sting, the Montrealer was arrested in Bogotá in September 2015. Returned to Canada, he received 20 months in prison.
• Stephen Fleming: No relation to Mathew Fleming, the Halifax man had charges over the Colombian sting withdrawn.
• Bassam Elouta: Separately charged in a major 2014 Ottawa drug bust called Project Anarchy, in April 2016 he received a five-year concurrent sentence.
• Alyas Rahimi: Detained in Mexico, he has invoked a so-called Amparo or “protection” clause. This has stalled his extradition to Canada, RCMP recently told the Post.
• Ryan Wedding: RCMP officials say they are “actively” searching for the man who placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom for Canada in Salt Lake City.
• Edouard Semmikian: Charges against the Montrealer were stayed.
• Charges against Bayron Figueroa Escobar, a Tello associate from Montreal, and Michael Costa of Vaughan, Ont., were dropped.
• Mykhaylo Koretskyy: The Toronto trucker is awaiting trial in New York.
• The murders of Cuong “Andy” Hoang, Philipos Kollaros and Jahanbakhsh Meshkati have never been solved.

bfitzpatrick@postmedia.com

Twitter: @BrianFitz_

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