{"id":697085,"date":"2026-05-27T12:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/697085\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T12:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:30:09","slug":"the-cigarette-clues-in-winnipegs-biggest-cartel-bust-point-to-an-indigenous-tobacco-empire-and-protected-entities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/697085\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cigarette Clues in Winnipeg’s Biggest Cartel Bust Point to an Indigenous Tobacco Empire and Protected Entities"},"content":{"rendered":"

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OTTAWA \u2014 When Winnipeg police laid out the largest drug seizure in Manitoba history last week \u2014 more than 525 kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl, 14 firearms, and $825,000 in cash \u2014 the bricks of narcotics and the row of guns drew the cameras. A quieter item in the evidence locker did not: 1.35 million contraband cigarettes.<\/p>\n

To a former senior Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) organized crime investigator who has spent decades tracing the illicit tobacco trade, that detail was perhaps the most revealing thing in the multi-agency probe. Illegal cigarettes, he told The Bureau, are the connective tissue of the networks that flood hard drugs from China and Mexico into Canadian communities. If tobacco produced on Indigenous lands fueling fentanyl production does not register with citizens, he says, the one billion in tax dollars lost every year in Ontario alone should at least raise eyebrows.<\/p>\n

And the trade is significantly influenced, in his assessment, not only by Hells Angels traffickers identified in the two-year Project Puma probe, but by an entity operating from a Six Nations base whose wealth and reach may supersede any comparable figures living in Canada or the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the most successful organized crime figurehead, maybe in North America,\u201d Rick Barnum said. \u201cBillions and billions of dollars, never being at risk really of arrest,\u201d with luxury properties \u201call over the world,\u201d sports cars, planes and yachts.<\/p>\n

Barnum, former Deputy Commissioner of the OPP Organized Crime command, now works for an industry group that tracks the increasing proliferation of contraband tobacco manufactured on Indigenous lands in Canada, mostly the Mohawk lands in Ontario between Hamilton and Buffalo. <\/p>\n

According to Barnum and industry groups, whose findings are backed by police investigations, multiple Ernst & Young reports and a report last year from former U.S. national security official David Luna, illegal tobacco has become a massive, low-risk profit center for transnational mafias tied to Canada\u2019s growing fentanyl production trade \u2014 a protected-jurisdiction revenue stream funding organized crime networks with connections to Mexico and China across Canada.<\/p>\n

Asked directly how the Indigenous tobacco entities tied to Project Puma compared with Ryan Wedding \u2014 the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned cartel proxy whose legacy network The Bureau assesses to be at the center of Project Puma \u2014 Rick Barnum did not hesitate. <\/p>\n

The Indigenous players could \u201cbuy\u201d numerous Hells Angels clubs across North America and \u201ccould buy a Ryan Wedding too,\u201d Barnum said. The wealth being generated from Mohawk lands, to the benefit of a relative few, he said, \u201cmakes Wedding look like a lower-level figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a blueprint showing how Canada is exploited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 When Winnipeg police laid out the largest drug seizure in Manitoba history last week \u2014 more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-697085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}