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N.B. Becoming Hotbed For Marijuana, Fraud.
By admin | October 13, 2004
Written by CBC News Online staff
Oct 13 2004.
New Brunswick’s drug trade is on the rise, sparked by an increasing number of marijuana growing operations, a new report on organized crime said Wednesday.
The report, the first public one released by the Criminal Intelligence Service New Brunswick, also shows that the province has one of the country’s highest rates of fraud.
In 2003, for example, 200 New Brunswickers were victims of identity theft, where criminals gain access to personal and banking information to drain accounts and run up big credit card bills. The losses totalled $261,000, the report said.
The capital city of Fredericton saw a 43-per-cent increase in fraud cases for 2003 over the previous three-year average, and Miramichi’s numbers rose 60 per cent compared to the average rate over the previous five years.
Partly as a result of those cases, New Brunswick has now pulled even with British Columbia in terms of fraud crimes per capita, and ranks behind only Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The cases include the passing of counterfeit currency, fraud committed over the internet and crimes related to “skimming” personal bank information from automated bank machines, the report said. It added that sophisticated Eastern European crime rings have been implicated in some of the cases involving credit card and debit card fraud in the province.
Criminal Intelligence Service New Brunswick director Mike Connolly said the increase in marijuana cultivation may be related to organized crime in neighbouring Quebec, which he says is the biggest supplier of marijuana in the country.
“There is a lot of pressure in other regions in Quebec, in particular to eradicate marijuana growth,” he said. That pressure may be causing criminals who would have operated in Quebec to set up shop in New Brunswick instead, he said.
The New Brunswick marijuana operations are often run by criminals of Vietnamese origin, the report said. Most of the drugs produced are then smuggled into the United States.
The report also says a growing number of local organized crime groups are illegally cutting trees from woodlots for which other people and companies hold harvesting rights.
The New Brunswick bureau of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada monitors and analyzes information for law enforcement agencies throughout the province.
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