Speaker 1: Campsite Media. In November, Derek's money runner was arrested by police.
Speaker 1: The runner was on his way back from Ontario, where
Speaker 1: he met Derek's buyer, another Mohawk named Jason Hill, and
Speaker 1: the trunk of the car was a bag full of
Speaker 1: cash payment for the tobacco shipments Derek had sent to Jason.
Speaker 1: I just figured they were watching down at Jason's place
Speaker 1: because there's so many trucks going in and add it
Speaker 1: here bringing tobacco because there basically the headquarters of of
Speaker 1: the cigarettes. A lot of the cigarettes are coming from
Speaker 1: there coming back to here to the Quebec side. So
Speaker 1: I thought they were watching him. So he really didn't
Speaker 1: have like any suspicion that they were in a fallback
Speaker 1: on you with all this. Well no, I mean if
Speaker 1: I did, I probably wouldn't have sent anymore. Derek was
Speaker 1: upset about having to stomach the loss, but it didn't
Speaker 1: stop him from keeping the business going. He had no
Speaker 1: idea that he was a major target for an undercover
Speaker 1: sting operation. I noticed the cops in that we're following
Speaker 1: us around, but they're always around here, so it was
Speaker 1: nothing really new to me. Since Derek first appeared on
Speaker 1: the project Miguel Radar investigators have collected hundreds of hours
Speaker 1: of wire tap phone calls and thousands of texts. Undercover
Speaker 1: police were now deeply embedded in the operation and the
Speaker 1: scope of the criminal organization was finally coming into focus.
Speaker 1: There were no dozens of people caught in the Migael
Speaker 1: web and cops were getting ready to spring the trap. Jimmy,
Speaker 1: the anonymous investigator who worked on Migael, helped plan the
Speaker 1: final operation. It takes weeks of planning. You gotta vit
Speaker 1: the agencies. You've gotta viet the officers, you gotta vet
Speaker 1: the sequence in which you're gonna take them down. You
Speaker 1: typically want to take down the people that would be
Speaker 1: most violent first, so hopefully they don't get word uh
Speaker 1: and and and load up. So the plan adding the
Speaker 1: execution is tremendous, right down to we gotta have breakfast
Speaker 1: for guys because we're bringing them in at two o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. The scope is massive, from tactical units
Speaker 1: um dealing with guys that may have guns too. How
Speaker 1: much Timmy's doughnuts are we gonna get? Those raids needed
Speaker 1: to all be conducted at the same time. Every door
Speaker 1: that needed to be kicked, needed to be kicked at
Speaker 1: the same time. The first thing you want him to
Speaker 1: know is you're screwing your gun in his ear. And
Speaker 1: that's it. At least from my perspective. With informants on
Speaker 1: the reservations and friends and law enforcement, nobody had a
Speaker 1: clue this was happening. It was It was brilliant. Were
Speaker 1: you taken by surprise? Did you know is coming? Well?
Speaker 1: We knew eventually, Uh, it was gonna happen because it's
Speaker 1: not the first time that you know what they targeted, Uh,
Speaker 1: the reserve because a lot of tobacco was coming into
Speaker 1: this reserve and a lot of others. But we know
Speaker 1: eventually it was going to happen because there was so
Speaker 1: much surveillance going on for months and months at a time. Um,
Speaker 1: I used to see it all the time undercovers. He
Speaker 1: just they stick out like a sore thumb. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of time that it was gonna happen,
Speaker 1: like I said, And it's just who where are they
Speaker 1: gonna grab? The way Derek saw it, it wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: be him. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He'd been in
Speaker 1: the business for years. Why would they go after him. Now,
Speaker 1: that was a middleman, That's all I was. And I
Speaker 1: was dragged into this this mess through those other guys
Speaker 1: that were being investigated doing other things. And it just
Speaker 1: so happens that I bought stuff off those ice and
Speaker 1: I was dragged into all their bull crap and all
Speaker 1: their people that were doing bad things. From the Hipside
Speaker 1: media and Dan Patrick Productions. This is running Smoke. I'm
Speaker 1: Roger Gola and this is episode three, The Takedown. Derrick
Speaker 1: White had spent nearly his whole life around the tobacco industry.
Speaker 1: In a place like Gnawaga, it was actually hard not
Speaker 1: to get involved with cigarettes. He started out helping his
Speaker 1: grandma sale cartons in the driveway as a teenager, and
Speaker 1: later on, when he built up his first gas station,
Speaker 1: he started selling cigarettes inside, and for years that was
Speaker 1: his only involvement with the industry, just selling cigarettes in
Speaker 1: his stores tax free to individual buyers like you or me.
Speaker 1: But in the late two thousands, Derek wanted to take
Speaker 1: his racing career to the next level and he was
Speaker 1: looking for another revenue stream when a friend recommended that
Speaker 1: Derek get into the business of wholesale tobacco instead of
Speaker 1: selling to consumers. He would sell raw tobacco to cigarette
Speaker 1: manufacturers in Mohawk Territories. It's very expensive to racing, so
Speaker 1: I mean, like any little bit you know helps, and
Speaker 1: I figured it's an old brainer. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what we've been doing for forever. So I said, uh,
Speaker 1: let me, let me try to sell. Derek went down
Speaker 1: to a casino in the Aguasas named Mohawk Territory, and
Speaker 1: there he was introduced to a man named Samuel Baker,
Speaker 1: a tobacco broker from North Carolina. We tried to reach
Speaker 1: out to Sam Baker, but he didn't respond to our requests.
Speaker 1: In any case, Derek says he struck a deal with
Speaker 1: sam and started wiring in money for truckloads of brought tobacco.
Speaker 1: Can you explain a bit of what that whole tobacco
Speaker 1: business looked like and what your role in that was, like,
Speaker 1: how did it work and how much of it were
Speaker 1: you personally involved in? I mean, it's no secret. Money
Speaker 1: was sent to the States, sent to a broker. The
Speaker 1: broker would go and buy it at the factory wherever
Speaker 1: they wherever they they they growed to tobacco or whatever
Speaker 1: they loaded up in the trucks, and they shipped it
Speaker 1: across and when they when they pull up at my door,
Speaker 1: I was just paying it, just like anything else. You figured, Hey,
Speaker 1: everything's uh, everything's culture, would it you know, what's everything's
Speaker 1: paid for? Derek thought he was totally in the clear.
Speaker 1: He knew that Canada levy to federal excise tax on
Speaker 1: every tobacco ship and as trucks crossed the border, but
Speaker 1: that wasn't his problem. Derek only took possession of the
Speaker 1: tobacco after it crossed the border. Normally, um, it's the
Speaker 1: exporter or uh, the guy driving the truck or the
Speaker 1: company takes care of all the taxes and everything. So
Speaker 1: when it's delivered to my place, you hire a broker.
Speaker 1: They take care of everything. They give you a price.
Speaker 1: It's this price. You figure, okay, well it's on my doorstep.
Speaker 1: Now it's all paid. You know why. I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about anything after that. In the beginning, Derek
Speaker 1: says he didn't even know how the tobacco got across
Speaker 1: the border. He turned a blind eye to that entire
Speaker 1: part of the operation, and as far as he knew,
Speaker 1: it was all being handled above board. I thought there
Speaker 1: was no risk because they told me they were doing
Speaker 1: it all legal and as long as I made a
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of bucks on it, it was
Speaker 1: it was worded. They told me it was guaranteed to
Speaker 1: get here, so I took their word for it. But
Speaker 1: as things went along, Derek started getting a peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain and found himself drawn deeper into the operation.
Speaker 1: In one instance, Derek says the tobacco broker asked him
Speaker 1: to find a warehouse in New Jersey. Derek claims he
Speaker 1: didn't know why they needed it, but according to investigators,
Speaker 1: the warehouse was used to swap tobacco between trailers behind
Speaker 1: clothes wars, making it more difficult for law enforcement to
Speaker 1: keep track of the shipments, sort of like a three
Speaker 1: card Monty. I was able to find somebody that has
Speaker 1: a warehouse that could store it there, and the other
Speaker 1: guys google pick it up, so they would only go
Speaker 1: like halfway. That's all I did. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: my that was my part of the thing, and say okay,
Speaker 1: well there's a place here. They dropped it off and
Speaker 1: whoever picked it up picked it up. Then the transporters
Speaker 1: started asking for ten thousand dollars in cash on top
Speaker 1: of the usual fee. Derek soon learned that it was
Speaker 1: being used to create false paperwork for the truck drivers.
Speaker 1: Paperwork that stayed of the trucks were full of fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables. Things look shady, but Derek sent the money. Anyway.
Speaker 1: You can't argue with these guys. If not, they'll just say,
Speaker 1: well tough, They're gonna keep whatever product they have in
Speaker 1: the truck, and they're just gonna keep it. They they
Speaker 1: basically just said, mind your own business, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: it to you. So I had no choice. I had
Speaker 1: to pay them whatever they on it. It was clear
Speaker 1: that things were getting into a gray area, getting a
Speaker 1: little risky, but Derek wasn't dissuaded. In fact, he got
Speaker 1: a kick out of it. It's almost like, how do
Speaker 1: you say, the first time you do it, then the
Speaker 1: second times like okay. It's almost like a drug addict.
Speaker 1: Basically you try a drug and then boom, you want
Speaker 1: to do it again. You want more, you want more,
Speaker 1: That's all it was. After a few years of doing
Speaker 1: business with his brokers in North Carolina and his buyer
Speaker 1: in Ontario, Derek ran into a race car driver named
Speaker 1: Paul Jehan Derek struck up a deal to rent his
Speaker 1: race cars to Paul John for thirty tho dollars a weekend,
Speaker 1: but after a few weeks Paul was behind on payments.
Speaker 1: Paul asked if you could pay with raw tobacco instead,
Speaker 1: and Derek said, sure, why not. A truck arrived at
Speaker 1: his warehouse soon after when Paul Jean freaking brought first
Speaker 1: load at the back. But that's when they started doing
Speaker 1: investigation on me. It turns out Paul Jean was working
Speaker 1: with a guy named Silvan et Tier, allegedly the mastermind
Speaker 1: behind a massive tobacco smuggling operation. So when Derek received
Speaker 1: tobacco from Paul Jean, it was actually Sylvan et Tiers
Speaker 1: organization that was delivering it, and Sylvan Etier was one
Speaker 1: of the main targets of Project My Gael. Undercover cops
Speaker 1: were on him like flies on ship. One of the
Speaker 1: trailers that they followed ended up coming to my place.
Speaker 1: So right from there they saw, okay, well we gotta
Speaker 1: link this guy with these guys, you know, and we
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with them. All they were doing
Speaker 1: is they were dropping it off and they were gone.
Speaker 1: It was tobacco, plain and simple. Hold on, We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. You're listening to Running Smoke media. As Derek
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, he was far from the first person to
Speaker 1: be targeted in an operationally project. Mygale, Gonna Wagga has
Speaker 1: been under intense scrutiny from law enforcement for decades because
Speaker 1: of its relationship with tobacco. I wanted to get a
Speaker 1: better sense of how the Mohawks cigarette industry worked and
Speaker 1: what life was like in the legal gray area. So
Speaker 1: I drove out on the backgrounds of Gonawaga and ended
Speaker 1: up in front of a Quanta hut with a blacked
Speaker 1: out Humby and an escalade sitting out front. Do you
Speaker 1: mind introducing yourself and telling us where we are? My
Speaker 1: name is Gonna de Ross and you're in Gonna Wa
Speaker 1: get Mohawk Territory and you're at my tobacco facility, and uh,
Speaker 1: what's uh? What's going on here? What's what do you
Speaker 1: do here? Well, we manufacturer cigarettes quite a few of
Speaker 1: different brands, so we take it right from the cut product,
Speaker 1: the cut tobacco, all the way through the end to
Speaker 1: a finished product. As soon as the factory door swung open,
Speaker 1: it was smacked in the face with the smell of tobacco.
Speaker 1: It felt like walking into a t G I fridays
Speaker 1: in Daytona when you can still smoke inside. And about
Speaker 1: how many cigarettes a year do you produced a year?
Speaker 1: I I wouldn't be able to tell you weekly. I
Speaker 1: mean on a good week, maybe seven dred cases a week.
Speaker 1: There's ten cigarettes in a case. There are these all
Speaker 1: sold all the reservation. Yes, yes, how doeschine? It looks
Speaker 1: like it's from the sixties, from the ages, actually, But
Speaker 1: I made a lot of machines. They may look old,
Speaker 1: they may look a off. What machines are machines. They
Speaker 1: get the job done. You know, is it difficult to
Speaker 1: get machines into get a log it? Well it was
Speaker 1: at one point, but you know the write people, you
Speaker 1: can get anything into gonna log. And dal should know
Speaker 1: because before he was a full fledged cigarette manufacturer, he
Speaker 1: was a smuggler. Oh. When I was smuggling, it was
Speaker 1: like almost a free for all. I loved it. It
Speaker 1: was action. Every day you're on a boat full of
Speaker 1: full of cigarettes, get a taste by cops. It was
Speaker 1: never us, but there was a gunshots and sometimes in
Speaker 1: a certain area other crews. I guess a little crazier.
Speaker 1: In the eighties and nineties, brand name cigarettes were smuggled
Speaker 1: across the St. Lawrence River. Smugglers were making use of
Speaker 1: the quirky geography of the U. S. Canadian border, which
Speaker 1: cuts right through the middle of the Agua Sasany Mohawk Territory,
Speaker 1: a couple hours drive from Nawaga. There were no border
Speaker 1: guards or customs agents on the territory, so you could
Speaker 1: easily smuggled cartons of cigarettes from the American side across
Speaker 1: the river to the Canadian side, where they could then
Speaker 1: be distributed to Mohawk territories across the country. But it
Speaker 1: was still risky business because as soon as the tobacco
Speaker 1: left the territory, it was fair game for the police.
Speaker 1: Get all your shiploaded up and ready to go, and
Speaker 1: then you got the highway to deal with it, sending
Speaker 1: all dozens of cars spotters. Guys don't a few kilometers
Speaker 1: with binoculars, watching what's coming, what's going, just hoping all
Speaker 1: your cars make it. Yeah, those are some good days,
Speaker 1: crazy days. The risk was worth it. Candidates started taxing
Speaker 1: the hell out of cigarettes, and if you could manage
Speaker 1: to smuggle them into the reserve from the states, you
Speaker 1: can sell them much cheaper and pocket a hefty profit.
Speaker 1: But here's something that might surprise you. The biggest boosters
Speaker 1: for the Mohawk cigarette industry were actually big tobacco companies themselves,
Speaker 1: specifically r J. Reynolds and its subsidiaries. If I was
Speaker 1: younger at the time, I probably you didn't know what
Speaker 1: was going on. You see all the main brands like
Speaker 1: Mark ten, the Moriad exports, but uh they were. They
Speaker 1: were all in on that too. Despite what you might
Speaker 1: think about big tobacco companies to not as honest and
Speaker 1: upstanding as they might seem. And back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: when Canada hiked up cigarette taxes, big tobacco was not
Speaker 1: happy higher taxes and fewer sales, and that's not something
Speaker 1: any self respecting cigar shopping executive can stomach. They needed
Speaker 1: to find a way to sell cheaper cigarettes, and Agasas
Speaker 1: Territory provided a solution. R J. Reynolds and its subsidiary
Speaker 1: companies would send their Canadian products to America, sidestepping the
Speaker 1: Canadian taxes. Those cigarettes were then taken to the Aga
Speaker 1: Sasan Territory, which sits on the border, and then Mohawk
Speaker 1: smugglers would bring those cigarettes back into Canada, where they
Speaker 1: would be sold on reservation cheaper than anywhere else. Smokers
Speaker 1: got cheaper cigarettes. R J. Reynolds recouped its losses, and
Speaker 1: Mohawk entrepreneurs made a hell of a lot of money.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty ingenious and elegant solution. Within a
Speaker 1: few short years, smoke shops lined all the main roads
Speaker 1: of Gnawaga, and the ripple effects of the new economy
Speaker 1: were impossible to miss. At one point, I'd say at
Speaker 1: least three quarters of the reserve was employed. Boy, this
Speaker 1: this industry and all people are building new homes by
Speaker 1: a new cars. You see it. Nowadays, we're you know,
Speaker 1: people are building nicer homes and bigger homes. They got
Speaker 1: the money to do it. Then one day it just
Speaker 1: all ended, all stopped. Eventually, the law caught up to R. J.
Speaker 1: Reynolds and slapped him with the lawsuit filed under the
Speaker 1: Rico Act, the same law used to take down mafia's
Speaker 1: and gangs. After decades of litigation, R J. Reynolds was
Speaker 1: fined four million dollars. But, more importantly for our story,
Speaker 1: the steady stream of brand name cigarettes that Mohawks had
Speaker 1: depended on for years had dried up. But that just
Speaker 1: meant folks had to get creative. Why take the chance
Speaker 1: and smuggling the cigarettes from one reserve to the next
Speaker 1: when you can make it here, right, Mohawk entrepreneurs started
Speaker 1: ordering cigarette rolling machines and building up factories just like dios,
Speaker 1: and now today it's probably upwards of twenty twenty locations,
Speaker 1: all different sizes. You know, you could have a bigger
Speaker 1: facilities all the way on until somebody running in a garage.
Speaker 1: But that's not to say that rolling your own cigarettes
Speaker 1: is perfectly risk free, because you still need to get
Speaker 1: tobacco into Gnawaga, and most tobacco sellers in Canada or
Speaker 1: the US won't sell to unlicensed facilities. So Mohawk manufacturers
Speaker 1: have to get creative with their supply chain, which isn't
Speaker 1: always looked upon kindly by the Canadian government. This, I
Speaker 1: think this industry is like playing a chess game with
Speaker 1: the government. So you know, they always make their moves.
Speaker 1: We ought to make our moves, try and be ten
Speaker 1: steps ahead of them, so to speak. You know, so
Speaker 1: sometimes the reserve will be dry, it'll be hard to
Speaker 1: get to back win here because they might have put
Speaker 1: something new in place to try to install the system,
Speaker 1: or and then other times in a year, it's just
Speaker 1: like the floodgates open. Somebody comes up with a new
Speaker 1: system that you know, the cops aren't onto it yet,
Speaker 1: they run it, they run it hard. What's it like
Speaker 1: to kind of have your entire life in the gray
Speaker 1: zone of walking that line of what the government considers
Speaker 1: legal and illegal. Like I said, it could be a
Speaker 1: rush for some people. For me, when I was younger,
Speaker 1: it was a rush. What I can't handle the rush anymore,
Speaker 1: And a lot a lot of people probably pulled out
Speaker 1: of this business tool for that reason, you know, just
Speaker 1: too much to worry about all the time, getting harassed
Speaker 1: at the border, getting harassed every everywhere. Now I hear
Speaker 1: what you're saying. A former smuggler who drives around and
Speaker 1: blacked out Humby and runs a cigarette factory deep in
Speaker 1: the woods might be badass. But why don't we zoom
Speaker 1: out a bit and talk to someone with a bit
Speaker 1: of distance on the issue, someone who's examined it from
Speaker 1: an outside perspective. My name is James Dixon. I am
Speaker 1: a full professor in the Department of Long Legal Studies,
Speaker 1: at Carlton University, right or bringing out the big guns. Baby,
Speaker 1: She's got degrees. There's an s on the end of
Speaker 1: that multiple degrees. What's more, Jane has spent her career
Speaker 1: focused on Indigenous rights and cross border issues, and she
Speaker 1: sees the criminalization of tobacco smuggling as more of a
Speaker 1: political issue than a legal one. This activity is only
Speaker 1: criminalized because governments have chosen to criminalize it. The cross
Speaker 1: border economy is, for many uh Indigenous people and many
Speaker 1: many Mohawk people, um, not just a mode of economic development.
Speaker 1: It is also a fundamental right that extends to the
Speaker 1: Mohawk people as indigenous people. UM. It is also simply
Speaker 1: the continuation of a practice that predates the border. And
Speaker 1: so you know, there's another reason to go, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, maybe it's really interesting that governments weren't ever
Speaker 1: able to support this kind of elpment. So now, acting
Speaker 1: on a traditional historical right, this community is building itself
Speaker 1: up in really positive ways in Canada at least, um,
Speaker 1: we seem to get very upset with Indigenous people who
Speaker 1: get wealthy. Were it not for the presence of that
Speaker 1: border and the presence of settler governments on either side
Speaker 1: of that border, this economy would not be UM, not
Speaker 1: be referred to, not stigmatized or labeled as essentially a
Speaker 1: form of criminal enterprise. The wealth that Gnawaga generated with
Speaker 1: a tobacco trade and later on with casinos meant that
Speaker 1: they could stand on their own feet financially, and in
Speaker 1: that way they sort of been an example that other
Speaker 1: Indigenous communities have looked up to within Canada. In recent history,
Speaker 1: the Mohawks have been one of the strongest and most
Speaker 1: activists voices in terms of leading the way in terms
Speaker 1: of demanding equality, demanding respect for their rights, and just
Speaker 1: generally not putting up with any ship that makes them
Speaker 1: very dangerous. And so, you know, what better way to
Speaker 1: limit the power of the Mohawk nation to lift up
Speaker 1: all indigenous nations UH in Canada and maybe you know,
Speaker 1: even over the border in the in the northern United States,
Speaker 1: UM then to criminalize them and present them all as
Speaker 1: a threat and present them all as you know, somehow
Speaker 1: not only a threat to to the economy, you know,
Speaker 1: and the supposedly a threat to massive incredibly wealthy corporations. Right,
Speaker 1: everything that we do to UM make ourselves better as
Speaker 1: smuggling or illegal or you know criminal Steve Bonspiel of
Speaker 1: the Eastern Dorm newspaper, which covers news across several Mohawk territories.
Speaker 1: That's the way they determ it because to make it
Speaker 1: make sense to them, I mean, it all comes down
Speaker 1: to tax dollars, right, I mean it's it's uh, they
Speaker 1: feel they're losing out in the tax dollars. They're the
Speaker 1: ones that are getting paid from the resources from our lands,
Speaker 1: you know, building on our lands, um paying taxes to
Speaker 1: their own uh you know, communities and whatever to build
Speaker 1: up their communities, not ours. And meanwhile we're getting left behind.
Speaker 1: So we've been pushing this corner. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: what else were we supposed to do? Naturally, there's a
Speaker 1: pretty contentious relationship between Mohawks and the tobacco trade and
Speaker 1: the Canadian government, which says the entire industry is illegal.
Speaker 1: And it also means there's a constant high level law
Speaker 1: enforcement presence around Gnawaga. If you could talk a bit
Speaker 1: about how the police presence and the surveillance in your
Speaker 1: day to day as you conduct this business, that's one
Speaker 1: thing that makes me really think about leaving the business.
Speaker 1: Every day we have helicopters over my house. They're just
Speaker 1: hovering there. They're watching. You know, you go outside, you're
Speaker 1: always her asked by the police. And when the cops
Speaker 1: see us, they don't know any better. They go buy
Speaker 1: what they read in my headlines. So they treat everybody
Speaker 1: here a lot harder than the outside. So they're always honest.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're here undercover every day. We know what
Speaker 1: they're capable of. They were at my front door without
Speaker 1: me even knowing they've been in this building would help
Speaker 1: me knowing, So I hope you're not a cop. It's
Speaker 1: in our DNA here to hate the Canadian government, the
Speaker 1: provincial police, the RCMP. It's just built in us man.
Speaker 1: So it's like growing up, you know, you hear all this,
Speaker 1: and and it's even me talking about it my kids here.
Speaker 1: But I'm not ashamed to say it in front of
Speaker 1: my kids because it's the truth. You know. We told
Speaker 1: him how how these police are around here. I've been
Speaker 1: arresting myself Back in two pols and fourteen. It was
Speaker 1: a sting operation very similar to Project Migale. Four hundred
Speaker 1: officers swept across Canada and arrested nearly thirty people. They
Speaker 1: suspected of smuggling tobacco and having connections with the organized
Speaker 1: crime deal. Was one of eight Mohawks arrested in the sting.
Speaker 1: In the end, he took a pleteo, but he insists
Speaker 1: that his only business was tobacco and that he wasn't
Speaker 1: involved with any of the shadier characters in the raid.
Speaker 1: You know your name is splattered into papers. They always
Speaker 1: throw extra things in there. They put in their Italian mafia,
Speaker 1: organized crime, guns, drugs. I was arrested with a lot
Speaker 1: of people I never even met. I think at the
Speaker 1: time it was the biggest one in North America until
Speaker 1: their case appeared, Derek White's case. Take the record away
Speaker 1: from you. I'm glad we went back. Called the largest
Speaker 1: grade of its kind in America. Quebec Provincial Police carried
Speaker 1: out Operation My Gale, aimed at dismantling what they called
Speaker 1: a drug, tobacco and money laund ring ring that had
Speaker 1: roots in Quebec and reached as far as South America
Speaker 1: and Europe social media. On the morning of March, after
Speaker 1: eighteen months of investigation and surveillance, the Project Mine Gale
Speaker 1: Trapdoor was finally sprawn. More than six hundred officers knocked
Speaker 1: down doors in North Carolina, Montreal, Toronto, and elsewhere, and
Speaker 1: made sixty arrests, chopping down the entire criminal organization. In
Speaker 1: one Fells, police seized four and a half million dollars
Speaker 1: in cash, eight hundred pounds of cocaine, fifty pounds of math,
Speaker 1: and a hundred and sixteen thousand pounds of contraband tobacco.
Speaker 1: On the outskirts of Montreal, swat teams burst through slant
Speaker 1: Ettier's door and found him sleeping in bed. Eighteen others
Speaker 1: were arrested in connection with the tobacco plot, but as
Speaker 1: for Derek and the three other Mohawks targeted in the raid, well,
Speaker 1: they were still walking free. Hunter Montour, a golf course
Speaker 1: manager who lives in Gonawauga, didn't even know the raids
Speaker 1: were happening until hours later. I was playing hockey. I
Speaker 1: think it was a Wednesday night, and a buddy of
Speaker 1: mine who who's also he's in the tobacco industry. He's
Speaker 1: been in the tobacco industry. Freeze. He goes. He goes, hey,
Speaker 1: I heard something about some kind of sting going on,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, I didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1: He goes up, You're gonna be arrested. Then I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I literally had no idea. Um.
Speaker 1: So the phone rings and I answered the phone and
Speaker 1: it's the town cops. Pea case Mohawk Peacekeepers, the local
Speaker 1: police force on the territory. Says, uh, this is so
Speaker 1: and solved. He says, UM, just letting you know that
Speaker 1: the s Q Uh, I want you to turn yourself in.
Speaker 1: I says, for what, He goes, I don't know. He says, Uh,
Speaker 1: they called and said, uh, you have to turn yourself in.
Speaker 1: The reason Hunter wasn't already wearing handcuffs is that Canadian
Speaker 1: police are not allowed on the reservation without permission from
Speaker 1: the peacekeepers, and peacekeepers do not enforce tobacco laws. So
Speaker 1: it was up to Hunter to go to the police
Speaker 1: station himself. I says, I don't I'm not doing that today.
Speaker 1: I says, I got shipped to doing it. Says my
Speaker 1: kids are gonna be home from school today, nobody's around,
Speaker 1: my wife's at work. I says, I'm not gonna just
Speaker 1: go turn myself in for them, for I don't even
Speaker 1: know what this is about. In the end, he found
Speaker 1: someone to watch the kids and got his other errands
Speaker 1: sorted out, He called ahead to the police station to
Speaker 1: let him know he was gonna be coming in. I
Speaker 1: was just getting ready to go out, and and then
Speaker 1: the phone ring and and it was Derek saying, meet
Speaker 1: me at we had to meet the lawyers. I guess
Speaker 1: he had gotten already started getting ready. He must have
Speaker 1: got the call to or whatever the peacekeepers call me,
Speaker 1: and they said that we have a warrant for your arrest,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to arrest you because it's for tobacco,
Speaker 1: which is we They recognize it as a legal part
Speaker 1: of our our inherited right basically, and it's legal in
Speaker 1: Gonna August, so they're not They said, it's up to
Speaker 1: me whether I want to go and turn myself in
Speaker 1: or don't turn myself in. Were surprised. Yeah, actually it
Speaker 1: was UM caught me off guard. I mean, we heard
Speaker 1: that there was a raid going on, but it was
Speaker 1: for um drug and UM guns and uh money laundering
Speaker 1: or whatever the hick it was that they rated all
Speaker 1: these places off the reserve. So as soon as you
Speaker 1: hung up with the peacekeepers, who you call next? I
Speaker 1: called my lawyer and I asked his opinion, and he
Speaker 1: kind of said, well, it's up to you what you
Speaker 1: want to do. I said, well, I'm going to turn
Speaker 1: myself in. I said, I don't have anything to hide from.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's legal here. Uh So I went
Speaker 1: turned myself in. Then they start reading us our rights
Speaker 1: and questioning and whatever, and they were asking ridiculous, stupid stuff,
Speaker 1: and I answered some of the questions. The questions were
Speaker 1: really really insane, like what just about who I knew?
Speaker 1: I said, I know all kinds of people all over
Speaker 1: the place. I said, I don't want to tell you
Speaker 1: anything because you're just gonna go bother them too, So
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you anymore. I guess that they were
Speaker 1: trying to trying to get information, you know, did you
Speaker 1: say anything? Were silent the whole time? Um, I said
Speaker 1: a few things, but it's nothing that they didn't already know.
Speaker 1: You know, they already know everything if they were doing
Speaker 1: an investigation for eighteen months or whatever how long it was. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't have anything to hide. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't involved in all those things that they said
Speaker 1: in on the papers and the news and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's me. It's just strictly tobacco and so in my mind,
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing anything wrong. The news was insane, the coverage.
Speaker 1: I was like, are you serious, Like hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars and all these stories come up here there
Speaker 1: you're in the mafia, You're associated these biker gangs, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, it's crazy. Derek's
Speaker 1: name was blasted across newspapers and websites within hours. He
Speaker 1: was referred to as a top ranking member of the
Speaker 1: smuggling operation. Well see, that's uh one thing that they
Speaker 1: didn't really do their homework very well. I mean I was,
Speaker 1: I was way on the bottom of the total pole.
Speaker 1: But they, of course they have to put the native
Speaker 1: person uh near close to to the top, you know,
Speaker 1: and make it uh such a big, a big thing
Speaker 1: that it's all the natives and we're we're dealing with
Speaker 1: the outsiders, with the mafia and the bikers and all
Speaker 1: the you know, all the bad people. I guess when
Speaker 1: they do uh a sting operation, it's easier just to
Speaker 1: grab the whole crew, even if they're not a part
Speaker 1: of anything, you know, Like I mean, there's over fifty
Speaker 1: guys in there, and I don't know any of them.
Speaker 1: To Derek and others in Gotta Waga, this was just
Speaker 1: another example of Canada overstepping its balance, infringing on Indigenous
Speaker 1: rights and making an example out of successful Native businessmen.
Speaker 1: It was a publicity stunt. There's more tobacco around than ever.
Speaker 1: There's trucks coming in every day. I mean this whole
Speaker 1: if you go around, it's not like as if oh
Speaker 1: we caught the big guy. We caught Derek, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's all gonna stop. That's what they think. There's
Speaker 1: more fucking tobacco and that's reserved than there has been
Speaker 1: in the last ten years. Derek posted bail after his
Speaker 1: questioning that was home before evening, but his release came
Speaker 1: with a few conditions. Well, I can't leave Quebec, that's one.
Speaker 1: They If I ask if i gotta go somewhere or something,
Speaker 1: if I'm going on a vacation or something, I gotta
Speaker 1: ask permission to leave. But other than that, the worst
Speaker 1: part is it is that NASCAR and me next time
Speaker 1: on running smoke. I mean, look at NASCAR. I mean
Speaker 1: it was it was built off bootlegging. No matter what,
Speaker 1: Derek was gonna get banned. We dissolved Derek's partnership where
Speaker 1: he was no longer an owner of NBA Motorsport. Usually
Speaker 1: you're you're innocent until you're proven guilty, right, But right
Speaker 1: off the bat they fucking banned me. As soon as
Speaker 1: I am free from all this stuff, I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: for a goddamn good lawyer in the States and sue
Speaker 1: Nascar too. Running Smokes the production of Campsite Media, Dan
Speaker 1: Patrick Productions and Workhouse Media, written and reported by me
Speaker 1: Roger Gola. Our producers are a Lea Pape's Blame, Gerbig
Speaker 1: and Julie Dennischet. Our editors are Michelle Lands and Emily Martinez.
Speaker 1: Sound designed and original music by Mark McAdam. Additional sound
Speaker 1: and mixed by Ewen Lyne from Ewan. Additional reporting by
Speaker 1: Susie McCarthy. Our executive producers are Dan Patrick, Josh Dean
Speaker 1: of camp Side Media, Paul Anderson, Nick Pinella, and Andrew
Speaker 1: Greenwood for Workhouse Media. Fact checking by Mary Mathis, artwork
Speaker 1: by Polly Adams, and additional thanks to Greg Horne, Johnny Kaufman,
Speaker 1: Sierra Franco, Elizabeth van Brocklin, and Sean Flynn