Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story included an embedded video which showed unnamed images of an industrial property occupied by tenants including a company called Naya Loading Ltd. The Edmonton Police Service has confirmed to Global News that no one at the address of the property shown was involved in this police investigation. We have removed the video and Global News regrets any confusion that this may have caused.
Edmonton police have arrested two men from Montreal and three from Edmonton for allegedly being involved in an auto theft ring set to send stolen high-end Dodge vehicles overseas.
The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) said it has been investigating these thefts for more than two months.
The EPS’ targeted response to auto-theft prevention (TRAP) team started looking into a series of 14 vehicle thefts involving Dodge Ram TRX pick-up trucks, Jeeps and Dodge Durangos valued at close to $1.68 million in late November, according to a Monday morning release.
Police said two of the trucks were recovered from inside a shipping container at a shipping yard in the Winterburn area of west Edmonton.
Four of the vehicles were also intercepted and recovered from inside shipping containers at the port of Montreal with the assistance of CBSA officers.
On Feb. 4, the investigation led TRAP team members to another shipping yard near 107 Avenue and 211 Street in Edmonton, where four more stolen vehicles were found, police said, adding the vehicles had been loaded onto shipping containers and delivered to a rail yard.
EPS said a police chase through northeast Edmonton that night also led investigators to a freshly stolen Ram TRX and a Jeep Trailhawk.
Police said Ali Kourani, 26, Kamaran Mahmoodpour, 23, both of Edmonton, as well as Michael Larue, 25, of Montreal, Jacob L’ Heureux, 30, of Saint-Mathias-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Tommy Gagnon-Morgan, 25, of Longueuil, Que., are all facing charges relating to the thefts.
Larue was also charged with dangerous driving and flight from police.
Bryan Gast is a VP with Équité Association, a non-profit that helps insurers fight fraud, which has been a major player investigating car thefts in Canada.
Gast told Global News in January that the situation of car thefts continues to get worse in the country, with most of them happening in Ontario due to its high population and quantity of quality cars, followed by Quebec then Alberta.
“We’re getting to a point now where globally we’re a source country for stolen vehicles,” he said.
“Other countries are targeting Canadian vehicles to steal and export.”
Gast explained that international criminal groups send lists of vehicles to be stolen in Canada to hired thieves. The vehicles are then smuggled out of the country and sold in places such as West Africa and Europe.
Enforcement of found vehicles abroad is lax, Gast said, making the thieves brazen in their actions. Cars have been located abroad still with Ontario licence plates, which has come to be a status symbol in some countries, Gast said.
A quick search of Jiji, an online marketplace in Nigeria similar to Canada’s Kijiji, resulted in finding a post for a Ford Focus with an Ontario licence plate still on it.
While Equité is working with local and federal law enforcement to find the cars before they are exported, Gast said that the sheer volume of vehicles exiting the ports makes the task difficult, and the thieves have been creative, finding workarounds to attempt to stop them.
–With files from Eric Stober, Global News