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But Schultes said the police surveillance showed Chen answering a call at the exact moment an officer dialled the number.

The judge also agreed with Crown Maggie Loda that the calls were unusually cryptic and suspicious,

“The focus is overwhelmingly on meeting locations, times and logistics to obtain and pay for ‘it’ which is quite conspicuously never defined,” Schultes said in courtroom 55 at the Vancouver Law Courts.

“There is really nothing in the nature of the conversations intercepted that is reasonably referable to any such business.”

While the case against Chen was entirely circumstantial, Schultes said the phone calls, police surveillance on both Chen and Jawanda, as well as Jawanda’s comments to the undercover police officer all prove Chen’s role in the drug operation.

Schultes accepted the Crown’s contention that Chen’s purpose for meeting Jawanda on Feb. 14, 2015 behind an East Vancouver restaurant was to give him a kilogram of ecstasy.

In a call before the meeting, Chen said: “I have to go get it now” and Jawanda responded that he needed “it” today.

An hour after the meeting, Jawanda sold the MDMA to the officer for $9,000.

On July 6, Chen called Jawanda and they arranged for a drug delivery in south Vancouver. The next day, the officer bought two kilos of MDMA for $17,000.

On Aug. 13, Chen was seen moving around a black suitcase that Schultes accepted contained more ecstasy that was given to the police officer the next day. Jawanda referred to his supplier as his “main guy … we’ve been doing business for like 20 years.”