Crime
As Trump 2.0 Scrutinizes Canadian Fentanyl Networks, British Columbia Advances Forfeiture on 14 Properties Linked to Alleged PRC Triad Associate
Vancouver journalist Bob Mackin reported that Paul King Jin, (red shorts and black T-shirt) met with a BC NDP politician at Jin’s boxing gym, which is linked to B.C.’s forfeiture claims. Also at this meeting were members of Beijing’s United Front Work Department groups in Vancouver.
The Pacific coastal metropolis, famous for its gleaming glass towers set against forested mountain peaks, isn’t merely concealing a toxic node of global narco-laundering. It has also become known as the “Dubai of the West” among transnational crime investigators, serving as a key encryption technology hub for various shadowy companies tied to Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and Iranian state-sponsored mafias and terror financiers
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — In a long-running legal effort to curb transnational money laundering believed to be fueling North America’s deadly fentanyl trade, the British Columbia Civil Forfeiture Office has secured a procedural victory in its pursuit of 14 Vancouver properties linked to an accused Chinese underworld financier, Paul King Jin.
Jin and his associates in Vancouver and Toronto — tied to “The Company” cartel and the notorious, U.S.-sanctioned Triad leader “Broken Tooth Koi,” according to RCMP sources — have drawn increasing interest from American enforcement and intelligence agencies in recent years.
Despite surmounting a legal hurdle in Jin’s case, Canada’s broader struggle to bring such figures to justice speaks to deep systemic vulnerabilities, enforcement experts say. Meanwhile, the United States grows more impatient with its northern neighbor’s susceptibility to global narcotics trafficking.
David Asher, a senior financial crime investigator in President Trump’s first administration, who recently credited The Bureau’s investigations into fentanyl trafficking networks at a security conference in Vancouver, says Triads in Toronto and Vancouver are “command and control” for laundering warehouses of cash stockpiled across North America by Mexican cartels that distribute toxic opioids for Chinese mafias that provide the precursors.
Citing a July 2024 memo from Asher, CBC reported today that the memo is reportedly now circulating among Trump’s transition team. Asher argues “Canada should be making substantive, systemic changes,” including implementing anti-racketeering laws and sharing intelligence with Washington on Canada-based fentanyl networks, CBC reported.
Asher’s memo does not pull punches.
“The key is to attack Cartel and Triad finances by targeting their complicit financial institutions,” it says, adding there is “massive money laundering” through a specific Canadian bank.
“It appears that almost all leading U.S. banks are complicit in accepting suspected narco cash to purchase real estate from native Communist Chinese investors,” the memo adds.
On paper, the B.C. government’s recent win seems straightforward: In September 2024, the B.C. Supreme Court effectively sided with the Director of Civil Forfeiture, allowing the province to proceed with a case to forfeit roughly $9.5 million in Vancouver-area real estate.
The 14 properties, the government asserts, served as conduits for illicit proceeds — illegal gaming, underground banking, and laundering activities tied to Mr. Jin’s network and, by extension, a web of international criminal enterprises, including Triads and diaspora banking brokers connected to cartels spanning Asia and the Americas.
But this portfolio is only part of the picture. The forfeiture claim notes that after Jin was banned from B.C. casinos, he established illegal gaming houses which, according to official filings, generated more than $32 million in net profit over just four months in 2015. These gambling dens formed another key node in the broader ecosystem of cash-based offenses believed to be driving the surge in dangerous synthetic drugs throughout North America.
The legal drama in B.C.’s latest claim — the fourth forfeiture suit against Jin in three years — began in November 2022. Everwell Knight Limited, a China-incorporated entity registered in Hong Kong that holds mortgages on the 14 contested properties, attempted to have the government’s forfeiture claim dismissed. Everwell argued that the Director of Civil Forfeiture had failed to meet procedural standards. The Vancouver lawyer representing Everwell invoked the Canadian Charter of Rights — a common strategic defense in Canadian money laundering cases.
In April 2023, the Director of Civil Forfeiture responded with an application for judgment by default against Mr. Jin. By failing to file a defense, the Director argued, Mr. Jin effectively conceded key allegations.
This fourth claim also highlights an absurd game of cat and mouse between Jin and the Director.
“Counsel for the Director received a phone call from a lawyer who advised he may be acting for P. Jin with respect to civil forfeiture matters,” the Director’s April 2023 application says. “Since that communication, the Director’s counsel has not received any further communications from that lawyer or from any other lawyer purporting to act for P. Jin in this action.”
The court was asked to deem that Mr. Jin had admitted essential facts, including his true role behind Everwell, YSHJ Investment Holding Ltd., and JYSH Investment Ltd. — entities allegedly held through Jin’s niece as nominee owners.
Everwell, YSHJ Investment Holding Ltd., and JYSH Investment Ltd. have all filed defenses denying any wrongdoing.
Key to B.C.’s case is the allegation that YSHJ and JYSH bought Vancouver properties and soon after, the Hong Kong-based Everwell registered mortgages and assigned rents against the units, suggesting a clever scheme to launder funds via rent and mortgage payments.
“The mortgages held by Everwell against the real property are not legitimate mortgages and were used by the defendants to launder proceeds of crime,” B.C.’s lawsuit says.
But from a broader perspective, B.C.’s procedural win may resemble a Pyrrhic victory. Civil forfeiture often serves as a fallback in Canada because prosecuting sophisticated international money launderers remains daunting. High-profile criminal cases — including the RCMP’s “E-Pirate” probe into the sprawling Richmond, B.C.-based Silver International underground bank, allegedly linked to Mr. Jin and his partner, Jian Jun Zhu — collapsed amid onerous disclosure rules and the immense challenge of translating millions of intercepted communications.
A B.C. special prosecutor’s review of the related “E-Nationalize” investigation, which focused on Mr. Jin’s networks, similarly fell apart. The review cited “considerable dispute” over police-gathered material — including over two million communications needing Chinese translation — and highlighted legislative gaps that make it hard to convict Jin.
Notably, the review acknowledged that running an underground bank like Silver International could be prosecuted as a criminal offense in the U.S. and U.K., but not in Canada.
Civil forfeiture, with its lower burden of proof, can freeze and seize suspicious assets. Yet it does not carry the moral weight or deterrent punch of a criminal sentence. The current case spotlights Jin’s alleged laundering through B.C. casinos and Silver International — the now-defunct underground bank run by Mr. Zhu, who was killed in a 2020 shooting at a Japanese restaurant in Richmond. An RCMP source said that night in the restaurant, senior Toronto-area figures linked to Tse Chi Lop’s “The Company” cartel were present alongside Jin and Zhu, illustrating both the proximity of violence to Jin’s affairs and his apparent ties to Tse’s networks.
According to a report from the Financial Action Task Force, a G7 anti-money laundering initiative, Silver International serviced Asian, Middle Eastern, and Mexican organized crime groups, laundering about $1 billion a year globally. The bank, one of numerous similar outfits in Vancouver and Toronto, was connected to Chinese underground bankers in diaspora communities across Latin America, as well as hundreds of related bank accounts in China, according to the RCMP’s case.
This underscores Vancouver’s role as a nexus in a global scheme that U.S. authorities say directly contributes to the fentanyl crisis ravaging American cities. The Pacific coastal metropolis, famous for its gleaming glass towers set against forested mountain peaks, isn’t merely concealing a toxic node of global narco-laundering. It has also become known as the “Dubai of the West” among transnational crime investigators, serving as a key encryption technology hub for various shadowy companies tied to Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and Iranian state-sponsored mafias and terror financiers, as Canada’s case against RCMP intelligence mole Cameron Ortis revealed.
As one senior U.S. law enforcement source familiar with DEA probes into Triad leader Tse Chi Lop — said to control “The Company” network and connected to both Paul Jin and Silver International — explained, “Canada’s lenient laws make it an attractive market.” The source added: “If someone gets caught with a couple of kilos of fentanyl in Canada, the likelihood of facing a 25-year sentence is very low.”
Jin, once targeted by Canada’s most ambitious anti-money laundering efforts, remains unscathed by criminal convictions. Still, Jin’s extensive travels to Mexico, Colombia, and Panama have, according to RCMP sources, led investigators to believe he is leveraging a global network of underground bankers and traffickers. His name surfaces alongside once-dominant figures like Xizhi Li, a Chinese Mexican gangster taken down by the DEA, and Tse Chi Lop, whose arrest in 2021 created a vacuum in major narcotics and money laundering operations.
“Jin has evolved from a local massage parlor manager to someone who has now expanded his business dealings nationally and internationally,” one RCMP source said. “One can surmise that voids are created with the arrests of Li and Tse. And historically speaking, when voids are created, they tend to be filled. The question is: Who is in a position to fill that?”
In recent years Jin was detained and searched by Mexican border officials, the source said. Although he carried nothing substantial beyond a single cannabis gummy and some empty boxes, officials reportedly discovered documents linking him to Vancouver loan-sharking disputes. More tellingly, they found a business card connected to “Broken Tooth Koi,” a Triad leader whose laundering operations stretch from Hong Kong into Canada’s financial systems, as previously documented in filings before the Cullen Commission.
In December 2020 U.S. sanctions highlighted Koi’s links to Beijing.
“Wan Kuok Koi, also commonly known as “Broken Tooth,” is a member of the Communist Party of China’s (CCP) Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference,” the sanctions say, “and is a leader of the 14K Triad, one of the largest Chinese organized criminal organizations in the world that engages in drug trafficking, illegal gambling, racketeering, human trafficking, and a range of other criminal activities.”
“The other piece that will connect to what you are interested in, is [Paul King Jin] had a business card that connects him to Broken Tooth Koi,” the source said. Asked if this indicated Jin was working with ‘The Company’ — a sophisticated Triad-linked entity moving cash worldwide — the source replied, “That would fit.”
“He seems to have stepped into a leadership role,” the source continued. “He has been heading to Central America a lot, and he is barely home anymore.”
The Bureau has not been able to reach Jin for comment through a Vancouver lawyer that represented him at the Cullen Commission.
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Crime
Public Execution of Anti-Cartel Mayor in Michoacán Prompts U.S. Offer to Intervene Against Cartels
“I don’t want to be just another mayor on the list of those executed”
On the first night of November, during Day of the Dead celebrations, the independent, anti-cartel mayor of Uruapan in Michoacán, Carlos Manzo, was assassinated in the heart of his city during a public festival. His bloody murder has underscored the deadly risks faced by local officials who may lack adequate protection from a state that critics say is corroded by corruption and penetrated by powerful cartel networks that, in some regions, have supplanted government authority. The killing intensifies urgent questions about political and police corruption, cartel impunity, and the scope of U.S.–Mexico security cooperation — with a response from the U.S. State Department today offering to “deepen security cooperation with Mexico.”
Manzo, a fiercely outspoken anti-cartel mayor who took office in 2024 as Uruapan’s first independent leader, was gunned down as he stood before crowds at the annual Day of the Dead candlelight celebration. Witnesses said gunfire erupted shortly after Manzo appeared onstage, holding his young son moments before the attack. The festival, known locally as the Festival de las Velas, drew hundreds of families to Uruapan’s central plaza — now transformed into the scene of Mexico’s latest high-profile political assassination, and a catalyst for nationwide outrage, as online protests surged and citizens called for demonstrations against cartel violence.
According to early reports, at least two suspects have been detained and one attacker was killed on site. Authorities asserted — despite the success of the attack — that Manzo had been under National Guard protection since December 2024, with additional reinforcements added in May 2025 following credible threats to his life.
In Washington today, the killing drew political reaction. “My thoughts are with the family and friends of Carlos Manzo, mayor of Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, who was assassinated at a public Day of the Dead celebration last night. The United States stands ready to deepen security cooperation with Mexico to wipe out organized crime on both sides of the border,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said in a statement shared online.
Federal Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said the gunmen “took advantage of the vulnerability of a public event” to carry out the attack, despite a standing security perimeter.
President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the killing as a “vile” assault on democracy and vowed there would be “zero impunity.” Her administration convened an emergency security meeting and pledged that the investigation would reach the “intellectual authors” of the crime. Yet the murder has already ignited outrage across Mexico over the government’s failure to protect local officials in cartel-dominated states such as Michoacán, where extortion, assassinations, and territorial disputes continue to erode basic governance.
Manzo had publicly warned of his fate. “I don’t want to be just another mayor on the list of those executed,” he said earlier this year, as he pressed the federal government for better coordination between municipal and military authorities. For years, Uruapan — an agricultural and trade hub in western Mexico — has been the site of deadly clashes between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and remnants of the Knights Templar Organization, both vying to control lucrative extortion and drug routes.
The killing of Manzo fits a dark and familiar pattern. In 2025 alone, several mayors in Michoacán, Guerrero, and Tamaulipas have been killed in attacks widely attributed to organized-crime groups. In June, the mayors of Tepalcatepec and Tacámbaro were ambushed and slain while traveling in official convoys. More than 90 local officials have been murdered since 2018 — a rate that analysts say reflects how cartels target municipal governments to ensure political control over territories tied to narcotics, mining, and agriculture. Uruapan, at the heart of Mexico’s avocado belt, is a strategic prize for the cartels that tax every shipment leaving the region.
The mayor’s death also recalls earlier tragedies that scarred the nation. In 2012, Dr. María Santos Gorrostieta Salazar, the former mayor of Tiquicheo, was abducted and murdered after surviving two assassination attempts and defying cartel threats. Her death became emblematic of the dangers faced by reformers who refuse to cooperate with criminal groups. More than a decade later, Manzo’s murder illustrates that little has changed — except the brazenness of the attackers, now willing to strike in front of cameras and families celebrating one of Mexico’s most sacred holidays.
The killing has also reignited long-standing U.S. frustration over Mexico’s inability to stem cartel violence, even as the Trump administration has expanded counter-narcotics operations at the border. Under Trump’s renewed directives, the U.S. has classified several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and empowered the Pentagon to develop strike options against high-value targets abroad. A September 2025 joint statement between Washington and Mexico City pledged deeper intelligence sharing and cross-border enforcement initiatives, including efforts to halt arms trafficking southward.
However, Mexico’s government remains deeply wary of any U.S. military involvement on its soil. President Sheinbaum has warned that “Mexico will not stand for an invasion in the name of counter-cartel operations,” rebuffing Republican calls for unilateral action. Her position lays bare a long-standing tension between Mexico’s need for U.S. support and its insistence on sovereignty — a fault line that Manzo’s killing has reignited.
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Crime
Canada Seizes 4,300 Litres of Chinese Drug Precursors Amid Trump’s Tariff Pressure Over Fentanyl Flows
In what appears to be the second-largest Chinese precursor-chemical seizure in British Columbia in the past decade, Canadian border and police officials announced they intercepted more than 4,300 litres of chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl and other synthetic drugs at a notoriously troubled port in Delta, B.C.
The announcement of a seizure that occurred in May 2025 comes amid President Donald Trump’s continuing pressure on Ottawa to crack down on fentanyl trafficking in the province — which U.S. officials say has become a key production and shipment point for Chinese and Mexican traffickers.
The seizure — announced jointly by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the RCMP — underscores the scale and persistence of global trafficking networks funnelling illicit materials into Canada’s drug markets.
According to the agencies, border officers examined two marine containers that arrived from China in mid-May, both bound for Calgary, Alberta. Acting on intelligence developed by CBSA’s Pacific Region, officers discovered 3,600 litres of 1,4 Butanediol, a key ingredient for producing GHB, often known as the “date-rape drug”; 500 litres of Propionyl Chloride, a chemical precursor used to synthesize fentanyl; and 200 litres of Gamma Butyrolactone (GBL), another controlled intoxicant.
The chemicals were concealed inside 60 clear jugs and 20 blue drums within the containers. Investigators believe the shipment was intended for use in clandestine drug laboratories. The RCMP confirmed that an investigation into the importation network remains ongoing.
The seizure comes amid growing concern about Canada’s port security, particularly in Metro Vancouver, where experts and local officials say criminal networks are exploiting gaps in federal enforcement.
The Delta seizure follows a series of major CBSA operations targeting precursor chemicals at Pacific ports. In May 2022, CBSA officers in the Metro Vancouver District examined a container from China declared as “toys” and discovered 1,133 kilograms of the fentanyl-precursor chemical Propionyl Chloride, with the potential to produce more than a billion doses of fentanyl.
Public Safety Canada also reported that in the first half of 2021, CBSA seized more than 5,000 kilograms of precursor chemicals, compared with just 512 kilograms in 2020 — reflecting what officials called a “dramatic escalation” in attempts to smuggle fentanyl inputs into the country.
In 2023, the City of Delta released a report highlighting major vulnerabilities at port terminal facilities, warning that there is “literally no downside” for organized criminals to infiltrate port operations. The report noted that British Columbia’s provincial threat assessment rated ports as highly susceptible to corruption and organized-crime infiltration.
At the time, Delta Mayor George Harvie called the lack of a dedicated national port-policing force “a threat to national security.” In comments to the Canadian Press, Harvie said that while Canada’s ports fall under federal jurisdiction, the “total absence of uniformed police at the facilities makes them obvious targets for criminal elements — from Mexican drug cartels to biker gangs.”
“We’re witnessing a relentless flow of illegal drugs, weapons and contraband into Canada through our ports, and that threatens our national security,” Harvie said.
The Port of Vancouver complex, which includes major terminals in Delta, Surrey, and Vancouver, handles roughly three million containers annually, with millions more expected as port expansion plans move forward.
The Delta report reiterated how difficult it has become to police these sprawling operations since the Ports Canada Police were disbanded in 1997. More than a quarter-century later, Harvie said, the consequences of that decision are now “alarmingly clear.”
The CBSA announcement today comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on Canadian exports, accusing Ottawa of failing to interdict the flow of fentanyl and precursor chemicals trafficked through British Columbia ports. Washington has repeatedly pressed Canada to strengthen port enforcement and anti-money-laundering controls, citing the West Coast’s role in China- and Mexico-linked trafficking networks.
Simultaneously, in trade negotiations with Beijing, Mr. Trump announced a reduction in tariffs tied to the fentanyl supply chain — raising concern that Washington has eased pressure on China, the primary source of finished fentanyl now responsible for hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths across North America.
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