Quebec, Ontario organized crime groups boost Western Canada vehicle thefts – National

Quebec and Ontario organized crime members are travelling to Western Canada to steal valuable vehicles and ship them to Montreal for illicit export sales, a new federal intelligence report says.

“Once generally regarded as a regional issue affecting mainly Ontario and Quebec, vehicle theft has expanded to Western Canada, with Alberta’s number of vehicle thefts now nearing that of Quebec’s, despite an approximately 45% lower population base,” says a report by the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC), an RCMP-led national criminal intelligence agency.

“At least some of the groups targeting these Western urban areas are believed to be from Ontario and Quebec,” adds the report, which was a special six-page strategic assessment of the growing wave of vehicle thefts in Canada tucked at the end of its December 2023 Report on Organized Crime.

Global News obtained a copy informally under the Access to Information Act.

“With the increasing involvement of violent street gangs, law enforcement can expect a continuing rise in violent carjackings to spread to other jurisdictions,” the report warned fellow police agencies.

Ontario and Quebec crime groups are moving west to dodge Eastern police enforcement and because vehicles from Western Canada “are perceived as less likely to have anti-theft protection,” the report adds.

In 2022 and 2023, Alberta reported 24,588 stolen vehicles compared to Quebec’s 29,705 according to data from Équité Association, a not-for-profit, national organization that tracks crime for insurers.

The CISC report notes the larger number of organized crime groups stealing vehicles overall, with street gangs being “the most prevalent,” has led to more carjackings, putting the public at risk.

“We’re seeing that already the violence has increased. We’ve seen an increase in carjackings and increase in home invasions and an increase in break and enters to steal vehicles, steal keys,” said Ontario Provincial Police Det. Insp. Scott Wade, the deputy director of the OPP’s Provincial Auto Theft and Towing Team.

The CISC report notes that in addition to being at risk of carjacking, a driver also “may be at risk of extortion and robbery” if they are not removed from their vehicle and let go by street gang members, a terrifying experience seen in some countries such as Brazil and South Africa.

But Wade says the police do not want to alarm Canadian consumers. Right now, the situation is scary but nowhere near as bad as in those countries, he said.

Canadian law enforcement agencies just want people to be aware of the problem and take comfort from the knowledge that police in Ontario and across Canada are sharing intelligence and fighting the problem together.

Police define an organized crime group as three or more people engaging in criminal activity for a common purpose. The CISC report states that 78 organized crime groups are now stealing vehicles across Canada, including 63 in Ontario and Quebec.

That’s up 62 per cent compared to 2022, the report said.

The CISC report does not identify any suspects or crime groups involved, but it does reveal that some vehicle thefts are becoming increasingly sneaky and brazen.

“While not yet as prevalent, there are indications that tow trucks are being used to steal vehicles that are parked on the street, a tactic that is believed to raise less suspicion from passersby,” the report noted, saying thefts are occurring at public parking lots, offices, grocery stores and movie theatres.

The report also explains why organized crime is glomming onto vehicle thefts: it’s incredibly financially lucrative for every small and bigger player in the criminal enterprise’s food chain.

The CISC intelligence teases apart how structured the organized crime groups stealing vehicles have become – and how lucrative the activities are for bad actors.

Though structures vary, intelligence states each group generally has two tiers: a lower level and a higher level, each of which typically includes three bad actors.

The “Lower-Level” network includes:

Spotter: gang members who travel residential streets, malls and commercial parking lots looking for vehicles. They may monitor and track vehicles with surreptitious GPS trackers they install.

Vehicle thief: Thieves and gang associates, who may be young offenders, steal the car, earning between $500 and $1,500 a vehicle.

Driver: A youth or street gang member is recruited to drive a stolen vehicle to an export location, like the Port of Montreal.

The “Higher-Level” network includes:

Facilitator: The intermediary who coordinates vehicle types, models and quantities to be stolen.

Buyer: Criminals either offshore or possibly located in Canada who request and buy stolen vehicles, before reselling them overseas.

Exporter: Co-ordinates the shipping and delivery of stolen vehicles overseas. These actors may use legitimate companies or create new ones using false documents and phony company officials to facilitate shipments of two vehicles in containers, earning $50,000 per load.

At the back end, the offshore higher-level sellers can resell Canadian stolen vehicles overseas for prices equal to their full market price in the United States – in U.S. currency, Wade told Global News.

“The profit margin is massive … And we’ve heard of areas where they’re almost getting double the value of a Canadian car,” he added. “If you were to steal a dozen cars and traffic them and send them overseas, well, your potential profit could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Edmonton Police Service Sgt. Ian Strom knows all about Quebecers traveling to Alberta to steal valuable trucks and ship them back to Montreal in containers meant for illicit export sales.

Strom leads one of the EPS Targeted Response to Auto Theft Prevention (TRAP) teams.

In November 2022, his team investigated a sudden surge in thefts of high-end Dodge TRX trucks.

At the time, investigators recovered two stolen trucks from a local shipping yard. A receipt found inside one truck led them to a local Edmonton man.

When the truck thefts started up again a few months later, that Edmonton suspect’s home was put under surveillance and police quickly located two freshly stolen Dodge trucks, Strom said.

But during that day, Strom said, three Quebec men arrived, retrieved one of the stolen trucks and delivered it to a shipping yard where it was loaded into a container. Two more containers, with four stolen vehicles inside, were then followed to a rail yard. (Those vehicles were later recovered.)

That night, Strom said, the Quebecers, while driving a stolen Jeep, stole another Dodge TRX. All three were eventually arrested and charged after what Strom called “a dangerous criminal flight from police.”

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Edmonton police found the group snatched six trucks that day, which authorities recovered.

“Two additional Dodge trucks were recovered at the port of Montreal as a result of our investigation,” Strom added. “We’re not sure how the connection between Edmonton and Quebec was made, but we do know that different individuals specialize in certain products they steal, like Dodge trucks and Jeeps.”

Edmonton police found that the ring involved three Quebec suspects working with locals; they had stolen a total of 14 trucks in the city worth $1.7 million. Six vehicles remain missing.

After the arrests, Montrealer Michael LaRue, who has a criminal record in Quebec, was jailed in Alberta from Feb. 5, 2023, until March 7, 2024, Strom said. (Before that case, LaRue had previously pleaded guilty in Quebec Court to vehicle theft charges, federal drug charges, and assaulting a police officer, court records show.)

LaRue returned to Montreal after his release from Alberta jail.

A month later, he was shot three times by Montreal police after he allegedly disregarded a police order to stop and get out of a reportedly stolen vehicle he was allegedly driving while his license was suspended. (He’s facing more charges in Quebec court and the province is now investigating his shooting. LaRue has said he was unfairly shot by police.)

The second Quebec man arrested, Tommy Morgan, saw his charges stayed, Strom said.

The third Quebecer arrested, whom Edmonton police identified as Jacob L’Heureux, remains at large. Police believe he left Alberta. He is now facing an arrest warrant, Strom said.

Another 2022 Edmonton police case saw another three men, all Ontario residents, arrested after dozens of Ford F-150 vehicles were stolen in the city.

More on that case is described in a previous Global News story.

Only seven of the vehicles were recovered at the time.

The CISC report states the percentage of stolen vehicles that organized crime exports to overseas destinations versus the number staying in Canada is unknown.

However, the report explained that stolen vehicles serve many purposes. Proceeds from overseas sales are used to commit or fund more crime, like drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, and money laundering.

One of the largest challenges in curbing organized crime’s outsized role in vehicle theft is the involvement of repeat offenders, the OPP and Toronto Police Service said in late June.

That’s when the Ontario Provincial Carjacking Joint Task Force, which operated from September 2023 to March 2024, announced it had made 124 arrests and laid 749 charges to combat the rising violence associated with auto theft crimes.

The task force said it recovered 177 stolen vehicles worth more than $10 million and seized eight guns.

At the time, Toronto Police Service Deputy Chief Rob Johnson added that the police were concerned that 44 per cent of the 124 suspects arrested were already out on bail from prior arrests at the time of their new arrest and 61 per cent were subsequently re-released on bail.

As of late June, Toronto police said there had been 149 carjackings in Toronto so far in 2024, an 86 per cent increase from last year, as well as 71 break-and-enters/home invasions where a vehicle was stolen.