In the crime business, silence is golden.
You talk to the cops, you become a marked man, especially when tens of millions of dollars are at stake. Colin Martin of Malakwa B.C., a self-confessed drug kingpin knew the risk he was taking when he offered to help American Drug Enforcement Agents bust some major cross-border smuggling operations that were moving marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine, provided they let him continue to do business unimpeded for 10 years, U.S. court papers show.
He claimed to have the “ability to control 70 percent of the work that comes out of B.C. and what comes into B.C.,” explaining that he “had a long history of credibility” in the drug business, which he had been in “for most of my adult life,” the Grand Jury indictment against allged drug smugglers state.
Martin offered to identify other B.C. drug lords and direct law enforcement agencies to drug loads as long as they “only arrested other people.”
What Martin did not anticipate was that his offer to help in the war on drugs would be made public in the court documents filed in Seattle three days before Christmas.
Three days after Christmas, Mounties knocked on his door to tell him that there was a contract out on his life.
“We warned him on Dec 28 and are monitoring the situation,” confirmed RCMP spokesman Sgt. Tim Shields, adding publically identifying informants was “absolute insanity”.
“We felt a duty to inform him,” said Shields, who declined further comment when asked if Martin had approached the RCMP to offer his services, before making his pitch to the Americans.
There are many in B.C.’s six-billion-dollar drug trade that moves marijuana and ecstasy south in exchange for cash, cocaine and guns, who would like to silence Martin.
They include members of the Hells Angels, the United Nations Gang and the Independent Soldiers, all of whom have used Martin’s helicopter services to move their contraband.
Their high-grade “Sugar Shack” marijuana went to the U.S. for about $2,500 to $3,000 Cdn. a pound, while the cocaine came back to Canada at about US $14,000 per kilo.
Machine guns, grenades and even rocket launchers were sometimes part of the exchange.
How long Martin can dodge the hitmen who want him dead is anyone’s guess.
A murder contract like this is worth anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000.
Generally, the hit team will involve about five people — the shooter, the back-up shooter, the driver, the spotter and the body-disposal guy.
That was some of the information the Americans gave the Mounties, after they publically named Martin as a wannabe informant and learned from their surveillance that their mistake was to end in murder.
The hit team, according to U.S. sources, was already on its way to Malakwa, B.C. when police presence likely warned them off.
Martin has not only talked about his operations to the cops.
He was featured in a CBC documentary last November on marijuana smuggling.
According to U.S. court documents, Martin is named alongside Sean William Doak, James Gregory Cameron and Adam Christian Serrano, all of whom are in B.C.
The Americans allege that this crime syndicate which was busted in “Operation Blade Runner” in February 2009 in a cross-border operation in Washington State and B.C., resulted in the seizure of two helicopters, 83 kilograms of cocaine, 340 kilograms of marijuana, and 240,000 ecstasy tablets, valued between $10 million and $15 million, plus a significant amount of cash, guns, and other equipment.
Among the helicopter pilots linked to Martin’s operations were Jeremy Snow, 29, who is serving a four-year sentence in the U.S. after he touched down in a Northern Idaho forest with 80 kgs of marijuana and Sam Lindsay-Brown, 24, who hanged himself in the Spokane County Jail after his arrest last February.
The Americans say they will try to extradite Martin. Martin says he plans to fight the extradition.
Given his public label as an “informant”, a U.S. jail cell may be the safest place for him to be for the next little while.
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http://www.theprovince.com/news/drug...640/story.html 
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