The Last King of Potland

Around 11:30 p.m. on April 2 in suburban Vancouver, B.C., Clayton Roueche's cell phone rang. It was his friend Pam Lee, who was looking for a ride down to Bellingham International Airport, where she hoped to catch a flight to a concert in California.

"I know I can't ask you," Lee said.

"Yeah," replied Roueche, as Canadian federal authorities quietly listened in with recording equipment. "I'll never come back."

"Do you know anybody that could?" Lee asked.

"Drive you to the States?" asked Roueche.

"Yeah," Lee replied.

Well, said Roueche, "I wouldn't even get down [to Bellingham]; they'd throw me in jail."

The only region of the U.S. he cared to visit, Roueche indicated, was its airspace. Double-chinned and heavily tattooed, Roueche, 33, correctly assumed that since he was suspected to be one of North America's top-level drug traders, authorities might be holding a cell for him in Seattle. Six months earlier, U.S. prosecutors had filed a sealed indictment, to be opened upon his arrest. It alleges that Roueche, who tooled around Canada in a sleek Maserati and armor-plated Lincoln Navigator, is the leader of British Columbia's "United Nations" drug gang, founded by Roueche and some of his high-school buddies in the 1990s. Now comprising as many as 300 white, Asian, and Persian members fond of dragon tattoos and designer hoodies, the gang has its own monogrammed tombstones, jewelry, and kilos of cocaine, as well as its own motto—"Honor, Loyalty, Respect"—and trail of alleged murders.

Canadian court documents describe United Nations members as "involved in marijuana grows and cross-border trafficking, extortion, threatening, and kidnappings and...linked to numerous homicides." Based in the Fraser River Valley south of Vancouver, the organization is connected to the international Chinese crime syndicate Triad, according to investigators.

With help from local associates, the UN's money and drugs move through Puget Sound or eastern Washington, then along the West Coast, according to U.S. and Canadian court documents. Cocaine flows north from Mexico, marijuana heads south to California, and cash goes both ways as payment and profit. The gang also deals in Ecstasy—but bud is #1.

On Sept. 21, 2005, one of the gang's planes flew 1,100 pounds of marijuana from British Columbia to California, the Seattle U.S. Attorney's office claims, part of an airlift of five flights from June 2005 to March 2006 that ferried 2,761 pounds of B.C. bud and lesser-quality grass to America. These figures were boggling even to seasoned agents. In less than 10 months, the gang had moved more than a ton of marijuana, which was then selling at more than $200 an ounce. Many of the shipments were being carried in small planes used to hop the border, or by vehicles down I-5 or Highway 97 through Okanogan County. (Fittingly, Highway 97 ends in Weed, California.) At the time, the Okanogan pipeline was so frenzied that it was possible to find bud-scented cash lying along the roadway, as the wife of a retired border agent did. (She was later allowed to keep the $507,000 she stumbled upon. See "Jack-Pot," SW, Oct. 18, 2006.)

Authorities say Roueche's ton of pot could have easily made him a multimillionaire—if the supply had reached the streets and proceeds had flowed back to Canada. But neither happened: The shipments were intercepted and confiscated as part of a multinational drug sweep launched in 2005.

Called Operation Frozen Timber, the investigation empowered U.S. and Canadian agents to jointly crack down on the flow of drugs through Okanogan and other popular routes, as well as to target major dealers running drugs via plane, helicopter, boat, and backpack through the North Cascades. Among those captured was Frank Tran, a Vancouver dealer and money launderer who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2006. According to court records, Tran was exchanging U.S. and Canadian currency at a rate of $300,000 a day. Also collared was Rob Kesling, a former Seattle car salesman turned ultimate fighter who got 17 years in 2006. One of his Canada-bound Colombian cocaine shipments alone had an estimated street value of more than $30 million, officials said (see "Stonewashed," SW, Jan. 17, 2007). And the gang's weapons supplier, 27-year-old Jong Lee, is now doing five years after being arrested in a Vancouver condo filled with explosives, machine guns, and land mines.

Altogether, federal authorities made 46 arrests and seized $40 million worth of marijuana and cocaine during Frozen Timber. But it wasn't until this past May, in one of the operation's lingering spinoff investigations, that they collared Roueche, whom they'd been after for at least three years. Their investigation involved a 10-man surveillance unit that tracked and tapped Roueche's movements and conversations, and those of his gang, virtually around the clock.

In recent years, authorities have intercepted not only the ton of marijuana but also "loads of cash" linked to Roueche that traveled from Vancouver and Seattle to Los Angeles. In southern California, bud profits would be used to buy cocaine that could then be sold in Canada. The confiscated drug cash alone came to $750,000. In Roueche's $450,000 condo in Coquitlam, just east of Vancouver, a search warrant turned up a stack of drug "score sheets" recording the buying and selling of nearly $875,000 in cocaine. When he was arrested, Roueche was sporting a UN insignia ring, watch, and chain bracelet valued at $125,000.