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The B.C. government wants the owner of a rural Fraser Valley property to forfeit his acreage because he was allegedly involved in a major cross-border helicopter drug-smuggling operation.

The director of civil forfeiture filed a lawsuit earlier this month claiming Stephen Michael Michaelson was the pilot of a helicopter that tried to pick up a large load of methamphetamine in Washington State in June.

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The helicopter was later found on Michaelson’s 33-acre property on Henderson Road just north of the U.S. border near Cultus Lake.

On June 11, the helicopter aborted a landing near Winthrop, Wash., after U.S. agents watched several suspects toss “188 kilograms of methamphetamine in five bags from their vehicles after departing the landing zone,” the suit says.

The RCMP had been notified of the suspected smuggling operation the day before by U.S. Homeland Security and tried to intercept the helicopter after it crossed back over the border into Canada.