REAL SCOOP: New indictment in US drug smuggling case
Credit to Author: Kim Bolan| Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 03:23:30 +0000
A new indictment was sworn this month in a California drug smuggling case where most of those accused are Canadians.
Now charged is Metro Vancouver man Ricky Korasak.
NOTE: Blog comments will be closed for a week as I will be out of town.
Here’s my story:
Until this month, he was known to U.S. investigators as FNU LNU (first name unknown, last name unknown), or by his aliases Joe and Canada Friend.
But now, one of the mystery men charged in a massive cross-border U.S. drug investigation has been identified as former Metro Vancouver realtor Ricky Korasak.
Korasak, 34, was named in a new indictment filed Oct. 8 in a California courtroom.
He is one of 17 Canadians and 13 others alleged to be part of an international drug smuggling organization moving ecstasy to California and trucking cocaine back into Canada.
The head of the operation, according to U.S. court records, is Vincent Yen Tek Chiu, a Vancouver man also known as “El Chino,” “Tiger” and “Immortal Planet” who was originally charged in July
Chiu is in custody after being arrested while on vacation in Cancun, Mexico.
On this side of the border, Chiu and his brother Richard were identified by police as clients of the illegal underground bank Silver International, which was used to launder money. Richard was found murdered and burned in Colombia in June.
“Defendants Chiu and Korasak and others, known and unknown, would arrange for the transportation of MDMA (ecstasy) from Canada into the United States in exchange for cocaine,” the new indictment says.
Chiu had other Canadians working as couriers. They were allegedly sent to California to deliver the ecstasy and pick up cocaine.
Chiu and an co-accused known only as Nica “would provide code names, telephone numbers and serial numbers on bills of currency to co-conspirators to use as a token for identification purposes during the exchange of controlled substances in the United States and during the exchange of currency in Canada as payment.”
U.S. agents intercepted several of the drug deliveries in 2018.
In February 2019, Korasak used “coded language” in intercepted calls to a would-be client telling him 24 kilograms of MDMA would be delivered the following week in Anaheim to exchange for 12 kilograms of cocaine. The “client” was actually a police agent, the indictment says.
The deal was made in Orange, California on Feb. 20 after the courier showed a bill with the serial number that Chiu had allegedly texted down before hand.
The Canadians didn’t know that their courier was cooperating with police and that the 12 kilograms they believed was cocaine was fake.
The sham cocaine was brought all the way up to Bellingham, leading to charges against all those who touched it.
Korasak is charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and ecstasy, as well as conspiracy to export the cocaine.
He has not yet been arrested.
In B.C., Korasak has a record for assault causing bodily harm related to an incident in White Rock in 2009. He got a one-year suspended sentence.
He held a realtor’s licence for nine months in 2011, Warren Mirko, of the Real Estate Council of B.C., confirmed Friday.
Mirko said the RECBC had no information about why Korasak only had a licence from March to December of that year.
“Unfortunately, RECBC’s digital records from that period in 2011 don’t show the details of the licensee’s termination,” he said.
Sources say Korasak is associated with some members of the Hells Angels and some in the Wolf Pack gang alliance.
An old Facebook account shows that several of his online friends have met tragic fates — Ryan Provencher was found murdered near Ashcroft in August, Wolf Pack leader Jeff Chang died of a drug overdose in 2015. Wolf Pack associate Dustin Wadsworth also died of an overdose in 2017.
Two other old Facebook friends are facing murder charges. David Tull was arrested last May for the fatal 2017 shooting of Tyler Pastuck in Langley. And another online pal, Brandon Teixeira, is wanted for the targeted murder of Nicholas Khabra in Surrey in 2017.
Korasak’s name was also used as an alias by the late Eddie Narong — one of six men shot to death in Surrey’s Balmoral Tower in 2007 by members of the Red Scorpion gang.