A black suitcase stuffed with $2.6 million in U.S. bills was so heavy it took two RCMP officers to pull it from the ocean, a Victoria provincial court trial heard Tuesday.
“I helped [Const. Shawn Davey] get the bag out of the water. It was like pulling someone out of the water who was wet. It felt like a couple of hundred pounds,” Cpl. Raj Sandhu testified at Jeffrey Melchior’s trial.
Melchior, a 46-year-old Lake Cowichan resident, is charged with money laundering and possession of property obtained by crime. He was arrested on his boat just after midnight on March 25, 2011, near the Canada-U.S. border.
Sandhu testified that he was the senior officer on board the police boat working for the Vancouver Island Border Integrity Unit that night. He received a report from the operations centre that a boat with no running lights was moving through the area at a high speed.
Although they didn’t initially see it, the boat passed right in front of their bow, Sandhu said. He increased his speed to 40 knots and headed after it.
Davey, who was wearing a night-vision monocular, spotted the boat in the distance. After a pursuit of three to four minutes, Davey reported the boat had come to an abrupt stop. As they pulled up to the boat, Davey saw a person on the boat throw the suitcase into the water, Sandhu said.
Two officers boarded the boat while Davey kept an eye on the suitcase, said Sandhu, who manoeuvred the boat to retrieve it.
When they opened the suitcase, they saw a large amount of U.S. currency, vacuum-sealed in plastic, Sandhu testified. Melchior was arrested and brought onto the RCMP boat.
Sandhu testified that he immediately removed the battery from Melchior’s BlackBerry because he knew it could be erased from afar. Sandhu said he expected he would find text messages and information on who Melchior was dealing with or reporting to.
“I wanted to get evidence about his activities that night,” said Sandhu, who sent the BlackBerry to Ottawa for analysis. “Anybody with this amount of cash, moving it at that time of day and discarding it ,was involved in working with a larger organization with extensive knowledge of how we do our operation.”
After Melchior’s arrest, the RCMP tried to find out where the money came from, Sandhu said. Undercover officers found out Melchior was living in a small mobile home with two garages. He had a car, a pickup and a small utility trailer. He lived with his wife, a couple of kids and a dog, Sandhu said.
“He was leading a modest life,” said Mark Jette, Melchior’s defence lawyer.
“It was nothing special for someone who had $2.6 million,” Sandhu replied.
Const. Dion Sutton testified that he brought police service dog Tito to the RCMP offices to see if he could detect narcotics on the plastic bags of cash found in the suitcase.
Tito, who is trained to detect six different kinds of drugs, pawed and sniffed at the plastic bags of cash, then sat down. The pawing indicates a small amount of narcotics odour, Sutton explained. “The dog would be more frantic for larger amounts.”
The trial has heard evidence in three voir dires — trial within a trial — on Melchior’s right to counsel, the admissibility of his statement to RCMP officers on the boat that night and whether the seizure and analysis of his BlackBerry were legal.
Judge Ernie Quantz is expected to rule on those voir dires this week.
