Former Yaletown highflyer now on U.S. drug charges

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Rick Bafaro

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uploaded by Barry ORegan

Rick Bafaro, said to be the mastermind in last April's Canada/USA drug smuggling fiasco in which Bafaro and four of his co smugglers were caught by US authourities. 

Bafaro promised ten grand each to his drug mules prominent businessmen Chris Neary and Daryl Fontana, along with two unknown accomplices Carl Andrew Thiessen and Sinisa Gavric to smuggle 60 kilos of marijuana over the heavily watched smugglers trail high atop the snow covered Cascade mountain range which borders Canada and the United States.

While Chris Neary and Daryl Fontana, two of Bafaro's accomplices garnered the most media attention, being one of Vancouver's most recognizable and prominent businessmen, Rick Bafaro was just a name without a face in the media, much the same as the other accomplices Gavric and Thiessen.

Bafaro, once a prominent Vancouver Canucks hairdresser and NHL hopeful in the past, who it is said played with the Revelstoke Rockets in the 1980s has been involved in assorted business ventures and is described as a caring father by his ex wife and a free spirit, while it is said Bafaro is also a compassionate and caring person and wonderful father.

As the US trial by jury nears this summer for the accused, one wonders how Bafaro sits in the US jail, while his more prominent businessmen compadres are free on bail and back in Vancouver, BC until their trial also resumes this summer.

The whereabouts of Thiessen and Gavric also come to mind, as it is safely assumed they too are joined in jail with Bafaro, perhaps just not prominent enough to swing the same "Free pass out of jail" deal as Neary and Fontana.

Certainly an interesting turn of events as this story unfolds.