Crime
EPS tells citizens to be on the lookout for for cannabis extraction labs in their neighbourhoods

Following several recent residential explosions involving cannabis butane extraction labs, the Edmonton Police Service is encouraging the public to keep a watchful eye over their neighbourhoods.
Cannabis labs involve extracting THC from cannabis to illegally produce cannabis oil or ‘shatter’, a concentrated form of THC.
“These explosions can be deadly, not only for the individuals living in the residence being used as a cannabis extraction lab, but also for those neighbours living nearby,” says EPS Sgt. Guy Pilon, of the Clan Lab Response team.
“Criminals are using highly explosive materials including butane and propane. “The vapor from just one regular sized can of butane has the capacity to destroy a 1,450 square foot home. These individuals are putting law-abiding citizens at risk.”
“We want citizens to be mindful and others such as food delivery drivers and the landlords of rental properties to ensure they are acting responsibly and checking on their properties regularly to ensure they aren’t be used by criminals who only care about making money, not about the neighbours’ safety.”
Investigators are reminding citizens to be vigilant, and to contact EPS if they see suspicious behaviour in their neighbourhood. Such behaviours include:
-Empty butane canisters being put out for weekly garbage pickup
-Equipment set up in residences or garages including lengthy stainless steel extraction tubes, pressurized containers connected together with wiring
-New venting which has been cut into the side of the residence
If you suspect you may have a cannabis extraction lab in your community. is asked to contact police at 780-423-4567 or #377 from a mobile phone. Anonymous information can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at www.p3tips.com/250.
Crime
Sweeping Boston Indictment Points to Vast Chinese Narco-Smuggling and Illegal Alien Labor Plot via Mexican Border

Sam Cooper
Case details a pipeline from China through Mexico, trapping trafficked illegal migrants as indentured workers in a sweeping drug network.
In a sweeping indictment that tears into an underworld of Chinese narco infiltration of North American cities — including the smuggling of impoverished Chinese nationals across the Mexican border to work as drug debt slaves in illegal drug houses — seven Chinese nationals living in Massachusetts stand accused of running a sprawling, multimillion-dollar marijuana trafficking and money laundering network across New England.
The backdrop of the human smuggling allegations stretches back to 2020, as an unprecedented wave of illegal Chinese migrants surged across the U.S. border with Mexico — a surge that peaked in 2024 under the Biden administration before the White House reversed course. This explosive migration trend became a flashpoint in heated U.S. election debates, fueling concerns over border security and transnational organized crime.
Six of the accused, including alleged ringleader Jianxiong Chen of Braintree, were arrested this week in coordinated FBI raids across Massachusetts. The border exploitation schemes match exactly with decades-long human smuggling and Chinese Triad criminal pipelines into America reported by The Bureau last summer, based on leaked intelligence documents filed by a Canadian immigration official in 1993. A seventh suspect in the new U.S. indictment, Yanrong Zhu, remains a fugitive and is believed to be moving between Greenfield, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York.
The case paints a striking portrait of China-based criminal organizations operating behind the quiet facades of upscale American suburban properties. Prosecutors allege the defendants owned or partnered with a network of sophisticated indoor grow houses hidden inside single-family residences in Massachusetts, Maine, and beyond, producing kilogram-scale shipments of marijuana. According to court documents, the marijuana was sold in bulk to distributors across the Northeast, and the profits — amounting to millions — were funneled into luxury real estate, cars, jewelry, and further expansion of their illicit operations.
“During a search of [ringleader Chen’s] home in October 2024, over $270,000 in cash was allegedly recovered from the house and from a Porsche in the driveway,” the indictment alleges, “as well as several Chinese passports and other identification documents inside a safe.”
According to the indictment, Chen’s cell phone data confirmed his personal role in orchestrating smuggling logistics and controlling workers. Additional searches of homes where co-defendants lived yielded over 109 kilograms of marijuana, nearly $200,000 in cash, and luxury items including a $65,000 gold Rolex with the price tag still attached.
A photo from the indictment, humorously but damningly, shows alleged ring member Hongbin Wu, 35, wearing a green “money laundering” T-shirt printed with an image of a hot iron pressing U.S. dollar bills on an ironing board — a snapshot that encapsulates the brazenness of the alleged scheme.
Key to FBI allegations of stunning sophistication tying together Chinese narcos along the U.S. East Coast with bases in mainland China is a document allegedly shared among the conspirators.
“The grow house operators maintained contact with each other through a list of marijuana cultivators and distributors from or with ties to China in the region called the ‘East Coast Contact List,’” the indictment alleges.
Investigators say the conspiracy reveals a human smuggling component directly tied to China’s underground migration and debt bondage networks, mirroring exactly the historic intelligence from Canadian and U.S. Homeland Security documents reported by The Bureau last summer.
The alleged leader, 39-year-old Jianxiong Chen, is charged with paying to smuggle Chinese nationals across the Mexican border, then forcing them to work in grow houses while withholding their passports until they repaid enormous smuggling debts.
“Data extracted from Chen’s cell phone allegedly revealed that he helped smuggle Chinese nationals into the United States — putting the aliens to work at one of the grow houses he controlled,” U.S. filings say.
“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. “These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise — building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover.”
The arrests come amid a surge of Chinese migrants entering the U.S. through Mexico, part of a pattern previously exposed in Canadian diplomatic and intelligence reporting. In 1993, a confidential Canadian government study, “Passports of Convenience,” warned that Chinese government officials, in collusion with Triads and corrupt Latin American partners, were driving a multi-billion-dollar human smuggling business. That report predicted that tens of thousands of migrants from coastal Fujian province would flood North America, empowered by Beijing’s tacit support and organized crime’s global reach.
It also warned that mass migration from China in the 1990s came during a time of political upheaval, a trend that has apparently re-emerged while President Xi Jinping’s economic and political guidance has been increasingly questioned among mainland citizens, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and lockdowns inside China.
The 1993 report, obtained and analyzed exclusively by The Bureau, described how the Triads — particularly those connected with Chinese Communist networks in Fujian — would leverage human smuggling to extend their influence into American cities. The migrants, often saddled with debts of $50,000 or more, became trapped in forced labor, prostitution, or drug networks, coerced to repay their passage fees.
“Alien smuggling is closely linked to narcotics smuggling; many of the persons smuggled in have to resort to prostitution or drug dealing to pay the smugglers,” the 1993 Canadian immigration report says.

Citing legal filings in one U.S. Homeland Security case, it says a Triad member who reportedly smuggled 150 Fujianese migrants into New York stated that if fees aren’t paid “the victims are often tortured until the money is paid.”
Supporting these early warnings, a 1995 U.S. Department of Justice report echoed the Canadian findings, stating that “up to 100,000 Chinese aliens are smuggled into the United States each year,” with 85 percent originating from Fujian. The DOJ report also cited allegations of “negotiations between the Sun Yee On Triad and the Mainland Chinese Government,” suggesting that smuggling and criminal infiltration were tolerated — if not orchestrated — to extend China’s economic and political influence abroad.
That report added American investigators and immigration officials concluded it was nearly impossible to counter waves of illegal immigration from China with deportation orders, and the government should focus on “the larger menace working its way into U.S. cities: Chinese transnational criminal organizations.”
“To combat the growing threat of Asian organized crime in the West,” it says, “law enforcement officials must tackle this new global problem through an understanding of the Triad system and the nature of its threat to Western countries.”
In New England, the Braintree indictment shows how those old predictions have not only materialized but scaled up.
These networks operate by embedding Chinese nationals into illicit industries in North America, from black-market cannabis cultivation to high-end money laundering. Once inside, they channel profits back through complex underground banking channels that tie the North American drug economy to China’s export-driven cash flows and, ultimately, to powerful actors in Beijing.
In recent years, Maine has emerged as a strategic hotspot for illicit Chinese-controlled marijuana operations. As The Bureau has reported, the state’s vast rural areas, lax local oversight, and proximity to East Coast urban markets have made it a favored location for covert grow houses.
Crime
Tucker Carlson: US intelligence is shielding Epstein network, not President Trump

From LifeSiteNews
By Robert Jones
Pam Bondi’s shifting story and Trump’s dismissal of Epstein questions have reignited scrutiny over the sealed files.
Tucker Carlson is raising new concerns about a possible intelligence cover-up in the Jeffrey Epstein case—this time implicating U.S. and Israeli agencies, as well as Trump ally and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
During a recent broadcast, Carlson discussed U.S. Attorney General Bondi’s refusal to release sealed Epstein files, along with the FBI and DOJ announcement that Epstein did not have a client list and did indeed kill himself.
Carlson offered two theories for Bondi’s words. The first: “Trump is involved—that Trump is on the list, that they’ve got a tape of Trump doing something awful.”
But Carlson quickly dismissed that idea, noting he’s spoken to Trump about Epstein and believes he wasn’t part of “creepy” activities. He also pointed out that the Biden administration holds the evidence and would likely have acted if there were grounds.
10 Shocking Stories the Media Buried Today
#10 – Tucker Carlson has two theories why Pam Bondi won’t release the Epstein Files.
Theory #1: “Trump is involved.”
But Tucker thinks this explanation is not very likely.
That brings us to Theory #2, which is that Tucker believes… pic.twitter.com/Wy8l5NWQvZ
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) July 8, 2025
Carlson’s second theory: the intelligence services are “at the very center of this story” and are being protected. His guest, Saagar Enjeti, agreed. “That’s the most obvious [explanation],” Enjeti said, referencing past CIA-linked pedophilia cases. He noted the agency had avoided prosecutions for fear suspects would reveal “sources and methods” in court.
The exchange aired as critics accused Bondi of shifting her account of what’s in the files. She previously referenced “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children,” but later claimed they were videos of child pornography downloaded by Epstein. Observers say that revision changes the legal and narrative stakes—and raises questions about credibility.
#9 – Pam Bondi changes the story on the “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein WITH children.”
BEFORE: Tens of thousands of videos of Epstein WITH children.
AFTER: Tens of thousands of videos of child p*rn were DOWNLOADED by Jeffrey Epstein.
Credit: @Ultrafrog17 pic.twitter.com/v5I2uulyzA
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) July 8, 2025
Donald Trump also appeared impatient with the matter. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? That is unbelievable,” he said in a video beside Bondi. This clip sparked backlash from longtime Trump supporters, including former Trump advisor Elon Musk, who reposted critical commentary on Trump and Bondi’s comments on X:
Musk previously alleged that Trump was himself implicated in the Epstein files. Although he retracted and apologized for this, he recently suggested that Steve Bannon was also implicated.
However, Carlson’s guest suggested that Bondi’s comments had another purpose. “The lie is a signal to everybody else involved,” he said. “The lie is not for you and me. The lie is for those implicated to say, ‘No matter what, we will protect you.’”
#7 – Guest leaves Tucker Carlson speechless with an interesting theory about the Epstein File cover-up.
“The lie is a signal to everybody else involved in the scheme that to the ultimate ends, the United States government will go to protect all of you.”
“The lie is not for you… pic.twitter.com/DWm3VwBmwF
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) July 8, 2025
The files in question remain sealed. It is unclear whether further revelations about Epstein will come to light, but Trump’s comments are not going to make the issue go away.
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