Two residents of the metropolis, Andrew Barera and Michael Joey D’Opera, were sentenced to penitentiary terms of three and two and a half years respectively, Monday afternoon at the Montreal courthouse.
Barera, 37, and D’Opera, 28, respectively pleaded guilty last October to charges of laundering the proceeds of crime and possession of two pistols and a silencer.
Barera, a bar manager, and D’Opera, a computer technician, were arrested in 2021 following a major investigation by the C Division Joint Proceeds of Crime Unit (Quebec ) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Michael Joey D’Opera
The investigation, called Carnet, began in March 2020 with a request for assistance from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the Boston region, in the United States, which was to collect money from a man from Laval and then transferred it to a group of cocaine exporters from Colombia.
On March 13, 2020, the day emergency measures against the COVID-19 pandemic were triggered in Quebec, an undercover RCMP officer met the Laval resident who gave him $560,000 in cash.
After the transaction, RCMP investigators began following the Laval resident who led them to Andrew Barera. The tailing of the latter then led the police to Saint-Louis Street in the Saint-Laurent borough, in the north of Montreal, to a barely furnished condo, where there was no food or clothing.
By surreptitiously entering the condo, they found an amount of approximately $120,000 and notebooks in which dates and amounts of transactions totaling $18 million over ten months were written.
PHOTOS TAKEN FROM A JUDICIAL DOCUMENT
Part of the money and accounting photographed by investigators in the condo on rue Saint-Louis, in Montreal
Later, the bloodhounds found the two pistols and the silencer for which D’Opera was guilty of possession. An amount of $46,000 was also seized.
COURTESY PHOTO
One of the pistols seized by RCMP investigators
Moving separations
“The defendants pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and thus avoided a long trial,” federal prosecutor M.e Philippe Legault announcing to Judge Pierre Dupras of the Court of Quebec that the prosecution and the defense have agreed on common suggestions for the two accused.
Barera and D’Opera have no other criminal histories.
Each carrying a bag of personal effects, escorted and handcuffed by special constables, they greeted several members of their respective families present in the room before heading to detention.
The seized sum of $46,000 was forfeited to the Attorney General of Canada. The two pistols and the silencer were confiscated for destruction.
D’Opéra is now the subject of an order prohibiting him from possessing a firearm.
The condo where the money and other items were found was not blocked because it is owned by an innocent third party.
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.