Truemors
Barry Artiste Op/Ed
Certainly a No Brainer when you see a 20 something cruising around town in a Ferrari. The law of Proceeds of Crime, cannot adequately apply if you lease rather than purchase if a company owns the vehicle in the first place. Vancouver and the Lower Mainland has always been a hotbed to launder drug money, either through property, home or business startups, including mortgage brokers, where many legitimate businesses turn a blind eye in a nudge, nudge, wink, wink business. Just wait till 2010 Olympics hit town and visitors from all over the world will come to British Columbia and see how easy it is to set up a Criminal enterprise, knowing the Justice system here in BC is a joke. Mark my words they (Criminals) will come and think they have just found Heaven.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=53e6a296-aa97-4a28-9c0b-0df0f07ba0e5
Gangsters find rides at four star auto lease
UN gang leaders, associates of the Red Scorpions and an accused trafficker caught in a bust of Ontario Hells Angels were customers
Kim Bolan, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, October 25, 2008
A nondescript car lot off the Barnet Highway in Coquitlam appears to have become a hot spot for Lower Mainland gangsters looking to lease high-end vehicles.
A Vancouver Sun investigation has found more than a dozen cars leased from Four Star Auto Lease Ltd. to leaders of the UN gang, to associates of the Red Scorpions and to an accused trafficker caught in a 2007 bust of Ontario Hells Angels.
As well, a young man murdered earlier this year outside a Surrey golf course had leased his 2002 Mercedes from Four Star, located at 2575 Barnet Highway.
Another Surrey man, who was charged with a murder outside a Victoria nightclub in July, had signed his deal on a luxury-car lease with the same Coquitlam firm.
Four Star recently filed a lawsuit against the mother and brother of a convicted hit man for failing to pay up on the 2002 Cadillac Escalade they rented, according to court documents obtained by The Sun.
Four Star president Erich Schmidt said he was aware of the situation, but felt his company had been victimized by brokers referring shady customers to his firm for financing agreements without his knowledge.
"I became aware of it about a year ago," Schmidt said. "We were having the cars coming back and they were shot up, so we started to look into it. I started to look at where the cars came from and they came from brokers."
Schmidt declined to name the brokers.
He said he had talked to both police and the Insurance Corporation of B.C., hoping they would give him a heads-up on gangsters "because they are probably in their files already."
"What ICBC said is, 'We can't do that, it is against the privacy law,'" Schmidt said Friday. "I said, 'You are putting us in danger by not telling us.'"
He said he has cut off business with three or four brokers who seemed to have been referring criminals to his company, some of whose "papers were falsified, the work records were all falsified, the money they were making."
"If the government would let us look a little bit deeper or if the police would warn us, there wouldn't be any problem," Schmidt said.
Unloading illicit cash
Police and regulators say many gangsters are leasing cars as an easy way to unload some of their illicit cash on big-ticket luxury vehicles.
Vancouver Police Insp. Dean Robinson, who heads the Uniformed Gang Task Force, said his front-line officers are stopping gangsters in their expensive rides, often modified with bullet-proof Kevlar and secret gun compartments.
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