Episode 3: The Takedown

the cigarettes. A lot of the cigarettes are coming from there coming back to here to the Quebec side. So I thought they were watching him. So he really didn't have like any suspicion that they were in a fallback on you with all this. Well no, I mean if I did, I probably wouldn't have sent anymore. Derek was upset about having to stomach the loss, but it didn't stop him from keeping the business going. He had no idea that he was a major target for an undercover

sting operation. I noticed the cops in that we're following us around, but they're always around here, so it was nothing really new to me. Since Derek first appeared on the project Miguel Radar investigators have collected hundreds of hours of wire tap phone calls and thousands of texts. Undercover police were now deeply embedded in the operation and the scope of the criminal organization was finally coming into focus. There were no dozens of people caught in the Migael

web and cops were getting ready to spring the trap. Jimmy, the anonymous investigator who worked on Migael, helped plan the final operation. It takes weeks of planning. You gotta vit the agencies. You've gotta viet the officers, you gotta vet the sequence in which you're gonna take them down. You typically want to take down the people that would be most violent first, so hopefully they don't get word uh

and and and load up. So the plan adding the execution is tremendous, right down to we gotta have breakfast for guys because we're bringing them in at two o'clock in the morning. The scope is massive, from tactical units um dealing with guys that may have guns too. How much Timmy's doughnuts are we gonna get? Those raids needed to all be conducted at the same time. Every door that needed to be kicked, needed to be kicked at the same time. The first thing you want him to

know is you're screwing your gun in his ear. And that's it. At least from my perspective. With informants on the reservations and friends and law enforcement, nobody had a clue this was happening. It was It was brilliant. Were you taken by surprise? Did you know is coming? Well? We knew eventually, Uh, it was gonna happen because it's not the first time that you know what they targeted, Uh, the reserve because a lot of tobacco was coming into

this reserve and a lot of others. But we know eventually it was going to happen because there was so much surveillance going on for months and months at a time. Um, I used to see it all the time undercovers. He just they stick out like a sore thumb. You know, it's just a matter of time that it was gonna happen, like I said, And it's just who where are they gonna grab? The way Derek saw it, it wasn't gonna be him. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He'd been in

the business for years. Why would they go after him. Now, that was a middleman, That's all I was. And I was dragged into this this mess through those other guys that were being investigated doing other things. And it just so happens that I bought stuff off those ice and I was dragged into all their bull crap and all their people that were doing bad things. From the Hipside media and Dan Patrick Productions. This is running Smoke. I'm

Roger Gola and this is episode three, The Takedown. Derrick White had spent nearly his whole life around the tobacco industry. In a place like Gnawaga, it was actually hard not

to get involved with cigarettes. He started out helping his grandma sale cartons in the driveway as a teenager, and later on, when he built up his first gas station, he started selling cigarettes inside, and for years that was his only involvement with the industry, just selling cigarettes in his stores tax free to individual buyers like you or me.

But in the late two thousands, Derek wanted to take his racing career to the next level and he was looking for another revenue stream when a friend recommended that Derek get into the business of wholesale tobacco instead of selling to consumers. He would sell raw tobacco to cigarette manufacturers in Mohawk Territories. It's very expensive to racing, so I mean, like any little bit you know helps, and I figured it's an old brainer. I mean, this is

what we've been doing for forever. So I said, uh, let me, let me try to sell. Derek went down to a casino in the Aguasas named Mohawk Territory, and there he was introduced to a man named Samuel Baker, a tobacco broker from North Carolina. We tried to reach out to Sam Baker, but he didn't respond to our requests. In any case, Derek says he struck a deal with sam and started wiring in money for truckloads of brought tobacco.

Can you explain a bit of what that whole tobacco business looked like and what your role in that was, like, how did it work and how much of it were you personally involved in? I mean, it's no secret. Money was sent to the States, sent to a broker. The broker would go and buy it at the factory wherever they wherever they they they growed to tobacco or whatever they loaded up in the trucks, and they shipped it across and when they when they pull up at my door,

I was just paying it, just like anything else. You figured, Hey, everything's uh, everything's culture, would it you know, what's everything's paid for? Derek thought he was totally in the clear. He knew that Canada levy to federal excise tax on every tobacco ship and as trucks crossed the border, but that wasn't his problem. Derek only took possession of the tobacco after it crossed the border. Normally, um, it's the exporter or uh, the guy driving the truck or the

company takes care of all the taxes and everything. So when it's delivered to my place, you hire a broker. They take care of everything. They give you a price. It's this price. You figure, okay, well it's on my doorstep. Now it's all paid. You know why. I don't have to worry about anything after that. In the beginning, Derek says he didn't even know how the tobacco got across the border. He turned a blind eye to that entire part of the operation, and as far as he knew,

it was all being handled above board. I thought there was no risk because they told me they were doing it all legal and as long as I made a you know, a couple of bucks on it, it was it was worded. They told me it was guaranteed to get here, so I took their word for it. But as things went along, Derek started getting a peek behind the curtain and found himself drawn deeper into the operation. In one instance, Derek says the tobacco broker asked him

to find a warehouse in New Jersey. Derek claims he didn't know why they needed it, but according to investigators, the warehouse was used to swap tobacco between trailers behind clothes wars, making it more difficult for law enforcement to keep track of the shipments, sort of like a three card Monty. I was able to find somebody that has a warehouse that could store it there, and the other guys google pick it up, so they would only go

like halfway. That's all I did. I mean, that was my that was my part of the thing, and say okay, well there's a place here. They dropped it off and whoever picked it up picked it up. Then the transporters started asking for ten thousand dollars in cash on top of the usual fee. Derek soon learned that it was being used to create false paperwork for the truck drivers. Paperwork that stayed of the trucks were full of fruits and vegetables. Things look shady, but Derek sent the money. Anyway.

You can't argue with these guys. If not, they'll just say, well tough, They're gonna keep whatever product they have in the truck, and they're just gonna keep it. They they basically just said, mind your own business, we're gonna get it to you. So I had no choice. I had to pay them whatever they on it. It was clear that things were getting into a gray area, getting a little risky, but Derek wasn't dissuaded. In fact, he got

a kick out of it. It's almost like, how do you say, the first time you do it, then the second times like okay. It's almost like a drug addict. Basically you try a drug and then boom, you want to do it again. You want more, you want more,

That's all it was. After a few years of doing business with his brokers in North Carolina and his buyer in Ontario, Derek ran into a race car driver named Paul Jehan Derek struck up a deal to rent his race cars to Paul John for thirty tho dollars a weekend, but after a few weeks Paul was behind on payments. Paul asked if you could pay with raw tobacco instead, and Derek said, sure, why not. A truck arrived at his warehouse soon after when Paul Jean freaking brought first

load at the back. But that's when they started doing investigation on me. It turns out Paul Jean was working with a guy named Silvan et Tier, allegedly the mastermind behind a massive tobacco smuggling operation. So when Derek received tobacco from Paul Jean, it was actually Sylvan et Tiers organization that was delivering it, and Sylvan Etier was one of the main targets of Project My Gael. Undercover cops

were on him like flies on ship. One of the trailers that they followed ended up coming to my place. So right from there they saw, okay, well we gotta link this guy with these guys, you know, and we had nothing to do with them. All they were doing is they were dropping it off and they were gone. It was tobacco, plain and simple. Hold on, We'll be right back. You're listening to Running Smoke media. As Derek mentioned earlier, he was far from the first person to

be targeted in an operationally project. Mygale, Gonna Wagga has been under intense scrutiny from law enforcement for decades because of its relationship with tobacco. I wanted to get a better sense of how the Mohawks cigarette industry worked and what life was like in the legal gray area. So I drove out on the backgrounds of Gonawaga and ended up in front of a Quanta hut with a blacked out Humby and an escalade sitting out front. Do you

mind introducing yourself and telling us where we are? My name is Gonna de Ross and you're in Gonna Wa get Mohawk Territory and you're at my tobacco facility, and uh, what's uh? What's going on here? What's what do you do here? Well, we manufacturer cigarettes quite a few of different brands, so we take it right from the cut product, the cut tobacco, all the way through the end to a finished product. As soon as the factory door swung open, it was smacked in the face with the smell of tobacco.

It felt like walking into a t G I fridays in Daytona when you can still smoke inside. And about how many cigarettes a year do you produced a year? I I wouldn't be able to tell you weekly. I mean on a good week, maybe seven dred cases a week. There's ten cigarettes in a case. There are these all sold all the reservation. Yes, yes, how doeschine? It looks like it's from the sixties, from the ages, actually, But I made a lot of machines. They may look old,

they may look a off. What machines are machines. They get the job done. You know, is it difficult to get machines into get a log it? Well it was at one point, but you know the write people, you can get anything into gonna log. And dal should know because before he was a full fledged cigarette manufacturer, he was a smuggler. Oh. When I was smuggling, it was like almost a free for all. I loved it. It was action. Every day you're on a boat full of

full of cigarettes, get a taste by cops. It was never us, but there was a gunshots and sometimes in a certain area other crews. I guess a little crazier. In the eighties and nineties, brand name cigarettes were smuggled across the St. Lawrence River. Smugglers were making use of the quirky geography of the U. S. Canadian border, which cuts right through the middle of the Agua Sasany Mohawk Territory,

a couple hours drive from Nawaga. There were no border guards or customs agents on the territory, so you could easily smuggled cartons of cigarettes from the American side across the river to the Canadian side, where they could then be distributed to Mohawk territories across the country. But it was still risky business because as soon as the tobacco left the territory, it was fair game for the police.

Get all your shiploaded up and ready to go, and then you got the highway to deal with it, sending all dozens of cars spotters. Guys don't a few kilometers with binoculars, watching what's coming, what's going, just hoping all your cars make it. Yeah, those are some good days, crazy days. The risk was worth it. Candidates started taxing the hell out of cigarettes, and if you could manage to smuggle them into the reserve from the states, you can sell them much cheaper and pocket a hefty profit.

But here's something that might surprise you. The biggest boosters for the Mohawk cigarette industry were actually big tobacco companies themselves, specifically r J. Reynolds and its subsidiaries. If I was younger at the time, I probably you didn't know what was going on. You see all the main brands like Mark ten, the Moriad exports, but uh they were. They were all in on that too. Despite what you might think about big tobacco companies to not as honest and

upstanding as they might seem. And back in the nineties, when Canada hiked up cigarette taxes, big tobacco was not happy higher taxes and fewer sales, and that's not something any self respecting cigar shopping executive can stomach. They needed to find a way to sell cheaper cigarettes, and Agasas Territory provided a solution. R J. Reynolds and its subsidiary companies would send their Canadian products to America, sidestepping the

Canadian taxes. Those cigarettes were then taken to the Aga Sasan Territory, which sits on the border, and then Mohawk smugglers would bring those cigarettes back into Canada, where they would be sold on reservation cheaper than anywhere else. Smokers got cheaper cigarettes. R J. Reynolds recouped its losses, and Mohawk entrepreneurs made a hell of a lot of money.

It was a pretty ingenious and elegant solution. Within a few short years, smoke shops lined all the main roads of Gnawaga, and the ripple effects of the new economy were impossible to miss. At one point, I'd say at least three quarters of the reserve was employed. Boy, this this industry and all people are building new homes by a new cars. You see it. Nowadays, we're you know, people are building nicer homes and bigger homes. They got the money to do it. Then one day it just

all ended, all stopped. Eventually, the law caught up to R. J. Reynolds and slapped him with the lawsuit filed under the Rico Act, the same law used to take down mafia's and gangs. After decades of litigation, R J. Reynolds was fined four million dollars. But, more importantly for our story, the steady stream of brand name cigarettes that Mohawks had depended on for years had dried up. But that just

meant folks had to get creative. Why take the chance and smuggling the cigarettes from one reserve to the next when you can make it here, right, Mohawk entrepreneurs started ordering cigarette rolling machines and building up factories just like dios, and now today it's probably upwards of twenty twenty locations, all different sizes. You know, you could have a bigger facilities all the way on until somebody running in a garage.

But that's not to say that rolling your own cigarettes is perfectly risk free, because you still need to get tobacco into Gnawaga, and most tobacco sellers in Canada or the US won't sell to unlicensed facilities. So Mohawk manufacturers have to get creative with their supply chain, which isn't always looked upon kindly by the Canadian government. This, I think this industry is like playing a chess game with the government. So you know, they always make their moves.

We ought to make our moves, try and be ten steps ahead of them, so to speak. You know, so sometimes the reserve will be dry, it'll be hard to get to back win here because they might have put something new in place to try to install the system, or and then other times in a year, it's just like the floodgates open. Somebody comes up with a new system that you know, the cops aren't onto it yet,

they run it, they run it hard. What's it like to kind of have your entire life in the gray zone of walking that line of what the government considers legal and illegal. Like I said, it could be a rush for some people. For me, when I was younger, it was a rush. What I can't handle the rush anymore, And a lot a lot of people probably pulled out of this business tool for that reason, you know, just too much to worry about all the time, getting harassed

at the border, getting harassed every everywhere. Now I hear what you're saying. A former smuggler who drives around and blacked out Humby and runs a cigarette factory deep in the woods might be badass. But why don't we zoom out a bit and talk to someone with a bit of distance on the issue, someone who's examined it from an outside perspective. My name is James Dixon. I am a full professor in the Department of Long Legal Studies, at Carlton University, right or bringing out the big guns. Baby,

She's got degrees. There's an s on the end of that multiple degrees. What's more, Jane has spent her career focused on Indigenous rights and cross border issues, and she sees the criminalization of tobacco smuggling as more of a political issue than a legal one. This activity is only criminalized because governments have chosen to criminalize it. The cross border economy is, for many uh Indigenous people and many many Mohawk people, um, not just a mode of economic development.

It is also a fundamental right that extends to the Mohawk people as indigenous people. UM. It is also simply the continuation of a practice that predates the border. And so you know, there's another reason to go, well, you know what, maybe it's really interesting that governments weren't ever

able to support this kind of elpment. So now, acting on a traditional historical right, this community is building itself up in really positive ways in Canada at least, um, we seem to get very upset with Indigenous people who get wealthy. Were it not for the presence of that border and the presence of settler governments on either side of that border, this economy would not be UM, not be referred to, not stigmatized or labeled as essentially a

form of criminal enterprise. The wealth that Gnawaga generated with a tobacco trade and later on with casinos meant that they could stand on their own feet financially, and in that way they sort of been an example that other

Indigenous communities have looked up to within Canada. In recent history, the Mohawks have been one of the strongest and most activists voices in terms of leading the way in terms of demanding equality, demanding respect for their rights, and just generally not putting up with any ship that makes them

very dangerous. And so, you know, what better way to limit the power of the Mohawk nation to lift up all indigenous nations UH in Canada and maybe you know, even over the border in the in the northern United States, UM then to criminalize them and present them all as a threat and present them all as you know, somehow not only a threat to to the economy, you know,

and the supposedly a threat to massive incredibly wealthy corporations. Right, everything that we do to UM make ourselves better as smuggling or illegal or you know criminal Steve Bonspiel of the Eastern Dorm newspaper, which covers news across several Mohawk territories. That's the way they determ it because to make it make sense to them, I mean, it all comes down to tax dollars, right, I mean it's it's uh, they

feel they're losing out in the tax dollars. They're the ones that are getting paid from the resources from our lands, you know, building on our lands, um paying taxes to their own uh you know, communities and whatever to build up their communities, not ours. And meanwhile we're getting left behind. So we've been pushing this corner. You know, it's like

what else were we supposed to do? Naturally, there's a pretty contentious relationship between Mohawks and the tobacco trade and the Canadian government, which says the entire industry is illegal. And it also means there's a constant high level law enforcement presence around Gnawaga. If you could talk a bit about how the police presence and the surveillance in your day to day as you conduct this business, that's one thing that makes me really think about leaving the business.

Every day we have helicopters over my house. They're just hovering there. They're watching. You know, you go outside, you're always her asked by the police. And when the cops see us, they don't know any better. They go buy what they read in my headlines. So they treat everybody here a lot harder than the outside. So they're always honest. I mean, they're here undercover every day. We know what

they're capable of. They were at my front door without me even knowing they've been in this building would help me knowing, So I hope you're not a cop. It's in our DNA here to hate the Canadian government, the provincial police, the RCMP. It's just built in us man. So it's like growing up, you know, you hear all this, and and it's even me talking about it my kids here. But I'm not ashamed to say it in front of my kids because it's the truth. You know. We told

him how how these police are around here. I've been arresting myself Back in two pols and fourteen. It was a sting operation very similar to Project Migale. Four hundred officers swept across Canada and arrested nearly thirty people. They suspected of smuggling tobacco and having connections with the organized crime deal. Was one of eight Mohawks arrested in the sting.

In the end, he took a pleteo, but he insists that his only business was tobacco and that he wasn't involved with any of the shadier characters in the raid. You know your name is splattered into papers. They always throw extra things in there. They put in their Italian mafia, organized crime, guns, drugs. I was arrested with a lot of people I never even met. I think at the time it was the biggest one in North America until their case appeared, Derek White's case. Take the record away

from you. I'm glad we went back. Called the largest grade of its kind in America. Quebec Provincial Police carried out Operation My Gale, aimed at dismantling what they called a drug, tobacco and money laund ring ring that had roots in Quebec and reached as far as South America and Europe social media. On the morning of March, after eighteen months of investigation and surveillance, the Project Mine Gale

Trapdoor was finally sprawn. More than six hundred officers knocked down doors in North Carolina, Montreal, Toronto, and elsewhere, and made sixty arrests, chopping down the entire criminal organization. In one Fells, police seized four and a half million dollars in cash, eight hundred pounds of cocaine, fifty pounds of math, and a hundred and sixteen thousand pounds of contraband tobacco. On the outskirts of Montreal, swat teams burst through slant

Ettier's door and found him sleeping in bed. Eighteen others were arrested in connection with the tobacco plot, but as for Derek and the three other Mohawks targeted in the raid, well, they were still walking free. Hunter Montour, a golf course manager who lives in Gonawauga, didn't even know the raids were happening until hours later. I was playing hockey. I think it was a Wednesday night, and a buddy of mine who who's also he's in the tobacco industry. He's

been in the tobacco industry. Freeze. He goes. He goes, hey, I heard something about some kind of sting going on, and I'm like, okay, I didn't think anything of it. He goes up, You're gonna be arrested. Then I said, I don't know why. I literally had no idea. Um. So the phone rings and I answered the phone and it's the town cops. Pea case Mohawk Peacekeepers, the local police force on the territory. Says, uh, this is so

and solved. He says, UM, just letting you know that the s Q Uh, I want you to turn yourself in. I says, for what, He goes, I don't know. He says, Uh, they called and said, uh, you have to turn yourself in. The reason Hunter wasn't already wearing handcuffs is that Canadian police are not allowed on the reservation without permission from the peacekeepers, and peacekeepers do not enforce tobacco laws. So it was up to Hunter to go to the police

station himself. I says, I don't I'm not doing that today. I says, I got shipped to doing it. Says my kids are gonna be home from school today, nobody's around, my wife's at work. I says, I'm not gonna just go turn myself in for them, for I don't even know what this is about. In the end, he found someone to watch the kids and got his other errands sorted out, He called ahead to the police station to

let him know he was gonna be coming in. I was just getting ready to go out, and and then the phone ring and and it was Derek saying, meet me at we had to meet the lawyers. I guess

he had gotten already started getting ready. He must have got the call to or whatever the peacekeepers call me, and they said that we have a warrant for your arrest, but we're not going to arrest you because it's for tobacco, which is we They recognize it as a legal part of our our inherited right basically, and it's legal in Gonna August, so they're not They said, it's up to me whether I want to go and turn myself in or don't turn myself in. Were surprised. Yeah, actually it

was UM caught me off guard. I mean, we heard that there was a raid going on, but it was for um drug and UM guns and uh money laundering or whatever the hick it was that they rated all these places off the reserve. So as soon as you hung up with the peacekeepers, who you call next? I called my lawyer and I asked his opinion, and he kind of said, well, it's up to you what you want to do. I said, well, I'm going to turn myself in. I said, I don't have anything to hide from.

I mean, it's it's legal here. Uh So I went turned myself in. Then they start reading us our rights and questioning and whatever, and they were asking ridiculous, stupid stuff, and I answered some of the questions. The questions were really really insane, like what just about who I knew? I said, I know all kinds of people all over the place. I said, I don't want to tell you anything because you're just gonna go bother them too, So

I'm not telling you anymore. I guess that they were trying to trying to get information, you know, did you say anything? Were silent the whole time? Um, I said a few things, but it's nothing that they didn't already know. You know, they already know everything if they were doing an investigation for eighteen months or whatever how long it was. So,

I mean, I didn't have anything to hide. I mean, I wasn't involved in all those things that they said in on the papers and the news and stuff like that. It's me. It's just strictly tobacco and so in my mind, I wasn't doing anything wrong. The news was insane, the coverage. I was like, are you serious, Like hundreds of millions of dollars and all these stories come up here there you're in the mafia, You're associated these biker gangs, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, it's crazy. Derek's

name was blasted across newspapers and websites within hours. He was referred to as a top ranking member of the smuggling operation. Well see, that's uh one thing that they didn't really do their homework very well. I mean I was, I was way on the bottom of the total pole.

But they, of course they have to put the native person uh near close to to the top, you know, and make it uh such a big, a big thing that it's all the natives and we're we're dealing with the outsiders, with the mafia and the bikers and all the you know, all the bad people. I guess when they do uh a sting operation, it's easier just to grab the whole crew, even if they're not a part of anything, you know, Like I mean, there's over fifty guys in there, and I don't know any of them.

To Derek and others in Gotta Waga, this was just another example of Canada overstepping its balance, infringing on Indigenous rights and making an example out of successful Native businessmen. It was a publicity stunt. There's more tobacco around than ever. There's trucks coming in every day. I mean this whole if you go around, it's not like as if oh we caught the big guy. We caught Derek, you know,

and it's all gonna stop. That's what they think. There's more fucking tobacco and that's reserved than there has been in the last ten years. Derek posted bail after his questioning that was home before evening, but his release came with a few conditions. Well, I can't leave Quebec, that's one. They If I ask if i gotta go somewhere or something, if I'm going on a vacation or something, I gotta ask permission to leave. But other than that, the worst part is it is that NASCAR and me next time

on running smoke. I mean, look at NASCAR. I mean it was it was built off bootlegging. No matter what, Derek was gonna get banned. We dissolved Derek's partnership where he was no longer an owner of NBA Motorsport. Usually you're you're innocent until you're proven guilty, right, But right off the bat they fucking banned me. As soon as I am free from all this stuff, I'm gonna look for a goddamn good lawyer in the States and sue

Nascar too. Running Smokes the production of Campsite Media, Dan Patrick Productions and Workhouse Media, written and reported by me Roger Gola. Our producers are a Lea Pape's Blame, Gerbig and Julie Dennischet. Our editors are Michelle Lands and Emily Martinez. Sound designed and original music by Mark McAdam. Additional sound and mixed by Ewen Lyne from Ewan. Additional reporting by

Susie McCarthy. Our executive producers are Dan Patrick, Josh Dean of camp Side Media, Paul Anderson, Nick Pinella, and Andrew Greenwood for Workhouse Media. Fact checking by Mary Mathis, artwork by Polly Adams, and additional thanks to Greg Horne, Johnny Kaufman, Sierra Franco, Elizabeth van Brocklin, and Sean Flynn