Pubdate: Sat, 16 Aug 2014
Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.montrealgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274
Author: Paul Cherry
Page: 3

U.S. JAIL CELL AWAITS THE 'KING OF POT'

Paul Cherry looks at two sides of Jimmy Cournoyer, the man they call
the King of Pot. There are two sides to Jimmy Cournoyer.

On one hand is the man described as a considerate person who spared no
expense in 2009 when a man, celebrating Cournoyer's 30th birthday with
a group of friends on the island of Ibiza, suffered an accident that
left him paralyzed for life.

Cournoyer spent "tens of thousands" to make sure his friend, a fellow
Laval resident who had no travel insurance, was well treated in a
hospital for a week and then flown back to Canada by air ambulance.

The other side of Cournoyer, 34, is the one awaiting sentencing Aug.
20 in a U.S. case where he has been characterized as one of Canada's
most prolific drug smugglers.

Cournoyer, a high-school dropout from Laval dubbed by some media as
"the King of Pot" last year when details of his case in New York were
made public, is facing a sentence of anywhere between 20 years, the
mandatory minimum for some of the charges he pleaded guilty to, and 30
years, as the U.S. attorney has requested. Cournoyer is estimated to
have smuggled more than 109,000 kilograms of Canadian-grown marijuana
into the U.S. over a decade. During the course of the investigation,
police seized hundreds of kilos of marijuana, 83 kilograms of cocaine
and 60,000 ecstasy pills.

The injured friend, who is now paraplegic, sent a letter to U.S.
District Court Judge Raymond Drearie asking him to consider Cournoyer
as "not only as (a) felon but also as man of soulfulness capable of
great deeds" before deciding on a sentence.

Statements by the defence say Cournoyer's family fell apart when he
was 16, after his father walked out, leaving him, his mother and
brother struggling financially. Cournoyer left high school to help
support the family, taking jobs installing pools and working on the
assembly line at a candy factory. When he was 18, he was arrested for
the first time for selling pot out of an apartment in Laval.

Documents filed by U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch paint a different
portrait - that of a cold-blooded drug dealer who partnered with the
Mafia and Hells Angels and would stop at nothing, including having a
woman severely beaten, to achieve his goals.

The difference in perceptions caused a flood of paper to be filed at a
New York district court in recent weeks. Near the end of July, defence
lawyer Gerald McMahon filed a letter stating several allegations made
in Lynch's sentencing memorandum are false, including one alleging
that, in 2001, Cournoyer almost pulled a loaded gun on members of the
Peel Regional Police when they surprised him as he was leaving a hotel
room in Toronto. The police officers were arresting Cournoyer after he
sold 10,000 ecstasy pills to an undercover cop.

Lynch responded a week later with a 15-page letter providing more
details on why authorities in the U.S. believe Cournoyer worked in
partnership with the Rizzuto crime family and the Hells Angels. Her
letter also contained a detailed report of Cournoyer's arrest in
Toronto on Dec. 2, 2001. Police described how Cournoyer, a martial
arts expert, fought with the arresting officers as he tried to head
back into his hotel room and reached inside his jacket. To the
officers, it appeared Cournoyer was reaching for the .45 calibre
handgun they found inside his jacket. It was loaded with five
hollow-tipped bullets, designed to cause more damage than a standard
bullet.

Cournoyer ended up serving time in a Canadian penitentiary near
Montreal for the ecstasy case. According to the U.S. government, he
was released on parole in 2007 having made valuable connections to
organized crime figures on the inside. During the same year, the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration began its investigation into
Cournoyer's network. It estimates the network made more than $1
billion. As part of a guilty plea entered last year, Cournoyer allowed
the U.S. government to confiscate more than $10 million in cash seized
during the investigation. That includes more than $5.5 million (U.S.)
seized in one raid in Salina, Kan., on Oct. 13, 2010.

More than a dozen people who worked with Cournoyer became co-operating
witnesses for the DEA probe. Lynch's reply to McMahon's criticisms
quotes one witness who met Cournoyer when both were brought to court
just after the indictment against Cournoyer was unsealed. At that
point, Cournoyer apparently did not know the person, referred to as
CW-12 in court documents, had become a government witness. Cournoyer
suspected a defence lawyer he knew had supplied information that
helped the DEA investigation. He had also figured out who three of the
many co-operating witnesses were.

"Cournoyer informed CW-12 that the four 'co-operators' were 'finished'
and drew his hand across his own throat in a slashing motion.
Cournoyer then fashioned his hand into the shape of a gun - gestures
which CW-12 clearly understood to mean that Cournoyer intended to have
these suspected witnesses against him killed," Lynch wrote in the last
document filed to Drearie. She reiterated the government's position
that "for the reasons set forth above" Cournoyer should be sentenced
to a 30-year prison term.
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