BC SEEKS MONEY IN 37 FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS ALLEGEDLY TIED TO DRUG RING
The province is going after money in 37 accounts at several financial institutions, which it alleges is tied to a Lower Mainland drug ring that distributed cannabis and psilocybin across Canada.
According to a B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit filed by the director of civil forfeiture on March 11, the B.C. defendants who hold the accounts, some of them through numbered companies, are accused of selling the drugs online, collecting thousands of payment through email transfers and then distributing the money to the people involved in the ring.
“The accounts are proceeds and instruments of unlawful activity,” the lawsuit alleges.
A B.C. Supreme Court order previously froze the accounts at eight different financial institutions in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, which include all five major Canadian banks, Coast Capital Savings Federal Credit Union, Tangerine Bank and Wealthsimple Investments.
The lawsuit does not specify the amount of money in the accounts, but says that during a 14-month period between Nov. 28, 2024 and Jan. 23, 2026, the “criminal organization” transferred more than $1.5 million using thousands of email money transfers into the various accounts.
In total, the forfeiture case names 16 people in B.C. that it alleges were involved in the drug ring.
Those include Rosa Mohammadi and James Addison Sherbuck, who are spouses, and who had a last known address in Burnaby. They, along with Noah Alan William Eves of Vancouver, were directly involved in the laundering the money, the lawsuit alleges.
None of the defendants had a licence to sell cannabis or cannabis products, says the lawsuit.
The offences listed against the accused include various drug-related charges including possession, trafficking, distribution and promoting sales. Other offences include possession of the proceeds of crime, money laundering, participating in a criminal organization and failure to declare taxable income.
None of the defendants have responded to the allegations in court.
The accused have not been charged criminally for the acts described in the forfeiture suit, according to a search of B.C. court records.
The threshold for proving a civil forfeiture claim is lower than for a criminal conviction, a balance of probabilities rather than beyond a reasonable doubt.
According to the lawuit, the RCMP’s cyber and financial investigation unit was tipped off in December 2023 by Canada’s Financial Transactions Analysis Centre, also known as Fintrac, about the “suspicious” transactions from reports submitted by numerous banks. Those reports described how business bank accounts associated with federally incorporated companies were receiving email transfers of the proceeds of sales of illicit products from online storefronts.
The federal government has been taking steps to increase information sharing among Fintrac, Canada’s financial intelligence-gathering agency, and policing and regulatory authorities for several years. And this year, the federal government announced that Fintrac will assign dedicated liaison officers to work directly with police to provide on-the-ground intelligence support.
The forfeiture suit noted that the “illicit” products for the websites were stored and packaged in warehouses across B.C., including a facility in Burnaby operated by Sherbuck.
The operation was running since at least 2022, says the forfeiture claim.
In its application to freeze the funds in the bank accounts, the province said during the RCMP’s investigation between May and June 2026, undercover officers made purchases of the illicit products from the websites.
On July 29, 2025, the B.C. community safety unit, which is responsible for enforcing compliance of the province’s cannabis rules, seized $2.7 million in cannabis from a Burnaby warehouse related to the investigation.
Related
2026-03-12T23:09:11Z