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On the afternoon of June 26, 2015, suspected drug traffickers Michael Reg Whieldon and David Bjorn Johnson arrived in Whieldon’s pickup truck at a supposed cosmetics manufacturer in southeast Vancouver.

Whieldon got out of his 2010 Dodge Ram pickup and carried a black-and-blue bag to the business on East Kent Avenue South, in a commercial building near the north arm of the Fraser River. According to police surveillance, about 10 minutes later, Whieldon returned to the truck empty-handed and the pair drove away.

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Photo by Police documents filed in BC Supreme court

That same day, according to a police report, the owner of the supposed cosmetics manufacturer, Maxim Poon Wong, also known as Nelson Wong, delivered more than $280,000 to a suspected underground bank in Richmond, called Silver International.

A months-long Vancouver Police Department investigation in 2015 concluded that the supposed cosmetics manufacturer, called Ritzy Products, was being used as a branch for Silver International, which is alleged to have washed hundreds of millions of drug money through wealthy Asian gamblers, who picked up bags of cash in Vancouver and deposited money in underground Chinese banks.