A Quebecer who exported fentanyl to 49 of the 50 American states will receive his sentence next week in Georgia. It will be delivered while President-elect Donald Trump points the finger at Canada as being one of those responsible for the presence in his country of this opioid which is wreaking havoc.
Published at 5:00 a.m.
Arden McCann, 37, a resident of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, on the South Shore, was “one of the most important sellers of the underground Internet,” argued an American prosecutor during observations on the barely started this week.
McCann is accused of plotting, for more than five years, the export of large quantities of fentanyl which caused at least one fatal overdose.
Arden McCann was arrested in February 2020 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), following a request from Justice Canada and the United States.
According to US court documents, McCann exported fentanyl, an opioid 40 times more potent than heroin, carfentanil, alprazolam – which he passed off as Xanax tablets – and other drugs to the United States. United from fall 2015 until 2020.
He used pseudonyms and notably offered these drugs on the illegal internet platform AlphaBay, dismantled following a police operation in 2017.
According to the evidence, McCann purchased the drugs and precursor products from China, South Korea or elsewhere, and had them delivered to American clients who became relayers.
These processed the drug and mailed it to American consumers. All transactions were carried out in cryptocurrency.
Torchbearers turned collaborating witnesses helped police nail McCann. One of them had celebrated the turn of the year 2015 while visiting McCann and allowed the police to identify him.
1 million per month
In US court documents, the Georgia state prosecutor indicates that, according to data captured on just two underground internet platforms, McCann executed 8,345 orders for more than US$10 million, and that he boasted to an accomplice that his business brought him 1 million US dollars monthly.
Simply put, for McCann, the staggering amount of money he made was a fair price for the death and destroyed lives of the American citizens who found themselves in his wake.
A Georgia prosecutor, in court documents
Court documents also reveal that RCMP investigators in Quebec searched his residence in 2015 and found, among other things, 15 firearms, bulletproof vests, millions of pills, a pill press and $200,000 in cash. species.
-McCann attempted to exclude the discovery of the 15 firearms from the list of aggravating factors, arguing that this discovery was before the period covered by the charges, and the judge will have to decide.
We also learn in the documents that the young Quebecer Cédrick Bourgault-Morin, arrested on January 13, 2016 on a railway line in North Troy, Vermont, while trying to smuggle into the United States on a sled, 82 kilograms of Xanax, was then acting at the request of McCann.
His arrest made headlines in 2016, and Bourgault-Morin was sentenced to a year in prison in the United States.
Little deterrent effect
Despite this arrest and the search carried out at his home in 2015, Arden McCann continued his business, also argues the American prosecutor.
McCann pleaded guilty to the count of conspiracy to import substances filed against him in September 2023.
However, last year, in 2024, synthetic cannabis was found in his cell following the fatal overdose of a fellow inmate who was in the same wing as him, at the Robert A. Deyton Detention Center in Lovejoy , in Georgia.
Investigators from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) opened an investigation and McCann was charged with trafficking substances within the walls of the facility.
“The resumption of criminal behavior following his guilty plea shows that McCann is reluctant to turn away from the criminal lifestyle that led to the initial arrest and, therefore, has not accepted responsibility.
“This period of six years [au cours de laquelle il a exporté des drogues aux États-Unis] has coincided with a dramatic increase in overdose deaths in the United States, most involving synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and its analogues. McCann knew from the start that underground internet customers were dying of drug overdoses. That didn’t stop him. Neither did the October 2015 search warrant,” prosecutors write.
At the sentencing stage, McCann received support from one of his close friends, a former investigator with the Montreal City Police Department, who said, in a letter to the judge, convinced that the convict will behave in the future “in a balanced and exemplary manner, becoming a reliable person on whom members of his family and society can count.”
With the collaboration of Vincent Larouche, The Press
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.
Who is Arden McCann?
- Before being arrested, he allegedly worked for a business distributing natural products and food supplements.
- He is accused of exporting large quantities of fentanyl and counterfeit Xanax to the United States from 2015 to 2020.
- US authorities say the drugs he sold were the cause of at least one fatal overdose.
- Even though his house was raided in 2015, he continued his illicit activities.
- Arrested in 2020 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the request of the United States, he lost his fight against the United States’ extradition request the following year.
- He will receive his sentence next week.
