A man busted trying to board a Winnipeg Greyhound bus with $1.3 million in his backpack claimed he "doesn't trust banks" and was using the money to buy a house in Vancouver, a court has heard.

Pressed for details, Erwin Speckert could not tell police exactly where the house was or who he was buying it from. A police investigation revealed Speckert was in fact couriering the money on behalf of an illegal Ontario gaming operation.

Speckert, 53, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison.

"It's clear the covert movement of large sums of money to avoid the scrutiny of the banking system and police is an integral part of illegal operations," said Judge Sid Lerner. "The cost of doing business in this way must be steep and prohibitively high and that is a lesson you have now come to learn."

Speckert pleaded guilty to the charge last October on what was to be the first day of a 42-day trial. Crown and defence lawyers jointly recommended the three-year sentence in a plea bargain that spared them from mounting what would have been a "hotly contested" argument over whether police had a right to search Speckert's backpack.

"The Crown had to be mindful of an adverse decision concerning admissibility of the search of the backpack," Crown attorney Don Melnyk said. "If the monies and the backpack were excluded, the Crown's case was decimated."

According to an agreed statement of facts submitted to court, Speckert had a one-way ticket to Vancouver and had stopped at the Winnipeg bus depot, Feb. 27, 2012, when he noticed a sign alerting passengers they were subject to a search of their baggage upon boarding.

Speckert approached a security officer and "advised he had something very valuable in his bag and did not want to be searched in public," said the agreed statement of facts. The security officer escorted him to a meeting room, where Speckert opened his backpack, showing it to be full of bundled money.

Speckert told the security officer "that everything was OK, he could travel with that amount of money" and that he was going to use the money to buy a house at auction.

Police were called and Speckert consented to them searching his backpack, court was told.

During a subsequent interview, Speckert told police he had lived in Switzerland since 1990 for tax reasons, was CEO of a financial wealth management company called Everest Asset Management, had been bringing cash to Canada for 10 years and didn't trust banks.

During an ensuing investigation, police seized Speckert's cellphone and uncovered text messages revealing Speckert was to be paid $26,000 for couriering the illegal gaming profits to Vancouver.

Speckert has no criminal record in Canada, but in 2014 ran afoul of the British Columbia Securities Commission for "conduct contrary to the public interest."

dean.pritchard@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @deanatwpgun