This is how RCMP duped drug traffickers with a fake Toronto-area warehouse

The RCMP set up an elaborate sting involving a fake warehouse in Mississauga to dupe a handful of now-convicted drug traffickers — right under the noses of several tenants in the building.

People who spoke to CTV News Toronto at the site were agog  there had been fake transactions involving real drugs in a scheme to help the Mounties get their men.

“You really don’t know who’s right next to us,” said Enara Dossa, who works in a warehouse at the building on Britannia Road. “I wouldn’t have guessed, no.”

A sentencing decision by Justice Suhail Akhtar of the Ontario Superior Court outlines how officers involved in Project Obermuder posed as potential drug dealers inside a fake warehouse “to serve as a ‘base’ for undercover officers in their fictitious roles.”

The investigation began in 2016 when officers began to look into a delivery driver for a furniture company. In a meeting, he said he had access to a supply of cocaine through a contact in Colombia, and eventually pitched shipping methamphetamine to Australia, where it could be sold for almost ten times the price.

By July 2018, an undercover officer met at a Pickering restaurant with three people including Lamar Burke and a man named “Brooklyn” to plan the exportation. Burke arrived at the fake warehouse to present the police with 4 kg of methamphetamine.

Drugs seized by police during a RCMP sting.

The officer gave him $28,000 for the delivery of two kilos and deducted $3,000 for the shipping fee for the remaining amounts to be “sent” to Australia, Akhtar wrote. The promised payout was as much as $275,000 — but it was all just a ruse.

“Brooklyn” turned out to be 57-year-old Brian Luckman, who didn't have a previous criminal record. He was sentenced in April to five years in prison after a jury trial.

Burke pleaded guilty to conspiracy to export and received a seven year sentence.

Mounties can legally lie and some deceptions go so far as to trick murder suspects to spill the beans to a group of fake criminals, known as a “Mr. Big” sting, said criminal lawyer Balfour Der.

But he said police have to stay on the right side of ethical lines, stay away from potential entrapment, and make sure they’re keeping tabs on how much the elaborate operations cost.

“We allow trucks but we don’t allow dirty tricks. That’s the line that judges judge by when we get to these scenarios,” Der said.