OFF THE WIRE
BY: SUE YANAGISAWA
Source: thewhig.com
Canada - ~Extortionist gets six months added to his prison term~
A 36-year-old Winnipeg man, convicted in May 2007 of extortion, drug trafficking and possession of proceeds of crime following a police sting mounted against the Manitoba Hells Angels, appeared in a Kingston court room this week to add six more months to his penitentiary sentence.
Ian Matthew Grant was originally sentenced in Winnipeg to 15 years in prison, but was given credit for 30 months of pretrial custody, leaving him with 12 1/2 years to serve. The court additionally ordered forfeiture of the $63,000 recovered from a safety deposit box that police discovered during their investigation.
Grant was also fined another $118,000, with the stipulation that if he failed to pay it within two years, a further two years would be added to his prison sentence. The fine had not been paid as of June 2009, when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of his conviction.
Grant pleaded guilty in Kings -ton's Ontario Court of Justice Tuesday to two counts of possessing proceeds of crime that were still outstanding from his original case, one relating to more than $5,000 in Canadian currency derived from his drug trafficking activities and the other to more than $5,000 derived from his extortion activities.
Federal Crown prosecutor Bruce MacNaughton told Justice Paul Megginson that Grant was caught during an investigation initiated in the fall of 2004 by the Manitoba Integrated Organized Crime Task Force.
That investigation ultimately resulted in more than a dozen arrests in addition to Grant, who was identified during his trial as a member of the Hells Angels. It also employed wiretaps, search warrants and a controversial civilian informant, who was paid $525,000 to help police collect evidence of drug dealing and other crimes.
Reading from an agreed statement of facts, MacNaughton described to the judge how Grant approached the informant in January 2005 to collect on an old drug debt.
At Grant's trial, the informant, who had a criminal history and an association with members of the Winnipeg Hells Angels prior to being recruited as a police agent, testified the $60,000 debt related to an ephedrine deal that had fallen through years earlier. However, he claimed at Grant's trial that his only role had been to introduce a Hells Angel member to a prospective buyer. Ephedrine is used in the manufacture of speed.
MacNaughton said Grant told the undercover police agent that he was now collecting the debt, and two days later demanded $5,000 as a sign of good faith.
Several weeks later, in early February, they met again at a 7-11 store near Grant's house, where the matter of the drug debt was broached again. MacNaugh -ton said the police mole gave Grant $500 in $20 bills that had been supplied by his police handlers. All of the serial numbers on the notes had previously been recorded, he told Megginson.
There was another meeting between the two men toward the end of February 2005, according to the prosecutor, at which the mole handed over another $1,200 in fifties and twenties to Grant, again with pre-recorded serial numbers. Megginson was told that Grant admitted to the the man at that time that he considered himself a "professional" extortionist.
