Sure, there was a lot of news, but many secrets were left out of the official announcement of the FBI
busting large scale drug-smuggling networks that were moving cocaine and meth from Mexico
to Los Angeles and then into Canada. But don't worry — I'm here to break it open, starting with
the secret snitch who brought down the narcos, and his incredible clandestine meetings with accused
Mexican drug lords, American traffickers and Canadian mobsters. While wearing a wire. In Mexico's
cartel heartland. Think about that for a moment. The Mob Reporter here with my exclusive revelations on
the sweeping cross-border smuggling operation that the U.S. Department of Justice codenamed Operation
Dead Hand and specifically on the informant at the epicenter of it all — from how he was recruited, to
what he did, proving he has nerves of steel and the cojonies to pull it all off. Let me tell you about
it. Here is how U.S. officials described their sprawling operation at a press conference
in Los Angeles, on January 30, 2024: "This is a takedown of a wide ranging International drug
trafficking conspiracy. This conspiracy spanned three countries. It involved drug suppliers
connected to cartels in Mexico, drug distributors and brokers in Los Angeles, Canadian truck drivers
and a network that exported drugs into Canada, and even an associate of the Italian Mafia in
Montreal, Canada." They showed off a mountain of drugs. They seized nearly a ton each of cocaine
and methamphetamine, along with kilos of fentanyl and heroin. Two related federal indictments accused
19 people of running Mexican dope north using a network of long-haul truck drivers as couriers
to get it across the United States and across the border into Canada. What wasn't said though
was this operation was entirely courtesy of a snitch. And not just a casual tattletail. Someone
who agreed to become a cooperating informant, a man who started it all off with his Insider knowledge
and finished it off by drawing his former colleagues into outrageous traps. As I first revealed in the
National Post reporting on recently unsealed court documents I obtained, the case started
in Canada where police were watching an Edmonton man who was moving drugs from the United States by
hiding them in transport trucks and paying drivers to haul it north. Canadian cops learned he had drug
stash houses in California and they tipped off police in Orange County, who put the guy's condo
in a suburb of Los Angeles under surveillance. They watched the Canadian guy drive around town picking
up bags and boxes and then handing them to truck drivers in gas stations and parking lots. Police
followed some of the trucks and stopped them for traffic violations. Drugs were found and drivers
arrested. One trucker who was arrested, however, made an intriguing offer to police. He would work as an
undercover informant for the feds in return for dropped charges and immigration benefits. A deal was
struck and the undercover snitch went back to work contacting his old trafficking pals, this
time using an FBI monitored phone. The traffickers used Signal, an encrypted messaging app. End-to-end
encryption can be great for holding secrets, but not if one of the ends is compromised. In this
case, every text, every phone call, every photo, sent to received by the informant was monitored and
collected by the FBI. The snitch went fishing and his old pals kept biting. His first call on
September 3, 2022, was to a guy he knew as Gucci, a drug supplier in Mexico. The FBI alleges that
Gucci is really John-Joe Soto, 42, of Guadalahara. Gucci, according to FBI documents, wanted the informant to
arrange for 100 kilos of cocaine to be hauled from LA to Baltimore. To drive it, the informant reached
out to a Canadian trucker he said he knew. The FBI alleges the driver was Subham Kumar, 29 of
Calgary. The informant ran all their logistics. He was good at that. He connected suppliers who had
product to move with drivers willing to move it. In between he arranged local distributors to do
the heavy lifting of taking the product from the supplier to the driver. They used a gangland form
of two-factor authentication. It works like this: anyone expecting to receive drugs takes a photo
of a dollar bill they have in their pocket, making sure it shows its serial number, and sends
it to the middleman, in this case to the informant. The informant then forwards the photo to a driver
who is going to pick up the drugs. Now, since every bank note has a unique serial number, a
driver is told not to hand over the drugs unless someone at the delivery spot first gives him that
very same dollar bill. The FBI and the Department of Justice say the informant ran this routine over
and over again with a widening circle of narcos and crooked drivers, with one network feeding the
province of Ontario and the other feeding the province of Quebec. One network allegedly had a a
leadership tier of three men from Guadalahara, Mexico, and one from Montreal, Canada. The FBI
identifies the Mexicans as Eduardo Carvajal, 50; Jesus Ruiz Sandoval Jr, 45; and John-Joe Soto, 42;
and from Montreal, Roberto Scoppa, 55. For Mafia watchers, Scoppa's name set off alarms. He shares a
notorious family name. His brothers Andrea Scoppa and Salvatore Scoppa were influential Mafia leaders
in Montreal before they were killed in 2019 during a mob war. The other network was allegedly run from
Canada. The FBI identified its leader as Guramrit Sidhu, 60, of Brampton. That's northwest of Toronto. Under
them, the FBI alleges, were an assortment of Canadian truckers and U.S. distributors. One man
from Long Beach, California, allegedly worked for both rings. He was identified as Carlos Barragan.
Here he is in selfies the FBI allegedly found on his phone when he was arrested. Working together,
the FBI in the United States and the RCMP in Canada, started tracking and seizing some of the
loads the informant was arranging. Authorities say they watched distributors in California
take boxes and duffel bags of cocaine and meth to meet truck drivers at their 18-wheeler semi-trucks in
the suburbs around L.A. The drivers hid the drugs in their big rigs, the FBI says, and then drove
along the web of interstates to make deliveries across the United States and into Canada. Cops
started picking off the trucks. They would follow them on the highway until they left California
and entered a neighboring state, when they would phone local police asking them to pull it over
for purported traffic violations and then find a reason to search the truck. Drugs were allegedly
found on all of them: between 50 and 200 kilos of cocaine, unless it was 200 kilos or more of meth.
That charade was to make it look like stopping the trucks was an incidental, local thing; a stroke bad
luck. Sometimes the local police bragged about the find, attributing it to alert officers and
dutiful drug sniffing dogs. One load in particular was heading to Montreal. When it got there, police
were waiting and arrested the truck driver and the man waiting to meet it at a warehouse. Before
that run, the informant had been sent photos of what was being delivered. The FBI sent it
to the Canadian cops. That's this photo here, on the left. After the seizure, the RCMP sent
back a photo of what they allegedly seized. That photo is on the right. They sure looked the same.
After trucks started getting stopped and drivers arrested — and even one of the distributors having
his house raided — the informant was summoned to Mexico to discuss things with the bosses, in
person. It's inconceivable he wasn't terrified. Had they figured it out? Did they know? Did they
suspect? On January 29, 2023, the informant walked across the U.S.-Mexico border into Tijuana, wearing
a wire. The FBI documents allege he was picked up at a cafe by Soto and driven to meet Sandoval Jr.
Walking into Sandoval's house, the informant was distracted by a rack of rifles hanging in
the kitchen. He saw more guns in a cabinet next to the bathroom. The informant was undoubtedly
relieved to hear he wasn't being fingered as a rat. No, instead they allegedly talked about
doing more business. Sandoval allegedly said the Hells Angels in Montreal were one of his biggest
customers. The crazy bikers ordered up to 600 kilos at a time, so much he sometimes had trouble filling
the entire order, he allegedly said, according to an FBI summary of the meeting that I've read. The
snitch was also summoned to a meeting with bosses in Guadalajara in west Mexico, the FBI
alleges. This is deep in cartel heartland, home to one of its most violent narco groups. There he met
with Carvajal, Scoppa and Soto, the documents say. They all went to dinner. The informant wore a wire. The
secret double life of the snitch officially ended on January 30, 2024, when a press conference was
called in Los Angeles to reveal Operation Dead Hand. By then search warrants and arrest warrants
had been executed in California, Texas, Florida, and in Canada, in Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta. In
L.A., those in custody started making appearances in court. The five arrested in Canada face extradition
to the United States. Carvajal and Soto are listed as fugitives. As for the snitch, his identity remains
protected and so far he has not been named. Now, you need to know that I obtained U.S. documents that
were recently unsealed in court, including grand jury indictments and lengthy affidavits sworn by
FBI agents that summarized their operations. The allegations contained in the documents have not
yet been tested in court. In fact, none of the accused have yet had an opportunity to mount
their defense in court and one of their lawyers cautioned me that, quote, "the allegations are not
necessarily accurate in all respects." But these are some of the allegations they will likely have to
face in court. Please give this video a like and a comment to help juice the algorithm, and tap
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