An ambitious cocaine smuggler who had ties to the Montreal Mafia died in a hospital early Thursday afternoon after he was shot in Laval’s Vimont district just before midnight Wednesday.
Sgt. Louise Philippe Bibeau, a spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec, said the provincial police force has taken control of the investigation because the slaying appears to be related to organized crime.
Ray Kanho, 42, was revealed to be a very active cocaine smuggler after his arrest in 2006 in Project Colisée — a lengthy investigation into the Rizzuto organization and its associates.
When first responders examined Kanho at the scene, he was semi-conscious and showed no external injuries. However, once he arrived at a hospital, doctors discovered the man had suffered a severe injury to his head that was later determined to be a bullet wound.
He was declared dead several hours later.
Kanho was business partners with Giuseppe Torre, 47. The duo used a group of employees who worked at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport to smuggle large quantities of cocaine off of airplanes after they landed. The service was referred to as “the door” through the airport, and the Montreal Mafia charged a fee for people to use it.
Kanho and Torre found themselves in hot water in 2005, when their 218-kilogram shipment of cocaine was seized by the RCMP. Leaders in the Montreal Mafia, like Francesco Arcadi, were surprised to learn how much was seized, because Torre had told them it was supposed to be 120 kilograms of cocaine. The conflict almost degenerated into violence as one Mafia leader sought answers.
Kanho and Torre served lengthy sentences after they pleaded guilty to charges filed against them in Project Colisée. During the sentencing stage of Kanho’s case in 2009, he was portrayed as a busy middleman who was able to converse with the people he dealt with in five different languages, including Creole, Italian and Arabic.
On Oct. 5, 2009, Kanho was sentenced to a 14-year prison term and the federal government confiscated more than $4 million in assets that Kanho had amassed in the years leading up to his arrest in 2006. As part of a negotiated settlement, he lost two houses in Laval and a 10-unit apartment building that he owned in Montreal. He also conceded that $2.8 million seized from his father’s home just before he was arrested in Colisée was generated from drug trafficking. During the investigation, Kanho was secretly recorded by police as he talked over the phone to another man and reacted to how the money suddenly vanished. He lamented over how he had “nothing left” when the RCMP secretly removed the cash from his father’s home.
Kanho was shot only a few days after Eliott Blanchard, 35, also a known drug trafficker, was shot in Laval’s Chomedey district.
Blanchard was shot early Monday morning in the parking lot of an apartment building on Havre-des-Îles Ave. He was taken to a hospital, but died several hours later.
In June 2013, Blanchard was identified as one of the leaders of a large group of people who produced and distributed methamphetamine throughout Laval and the Laurentians. More than 40 people were arrested in an investigation led by the Laval police. More than two million methamphetamine pills were seized as part of the probe.
Five months after his arrest, Blanchard pleaded guilty to conspiracy and drug trafficking charges and he was sentenced on Nov. 26, 2013, to a prison term of 30 months.
Bibeau said that while Kanho and Blanchard’s deaths appear to be linked to organized crime, it is too early to say whether the homicides are related.
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