A Surrey man convicted last year of carrying a loaded handgun into a Surrey restaurant is facing multiple money laundering charges in the U.S. involving more than $5 million in drug proceeds.
According to Washington State court documents, Glenn Harley Sheck is charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering and 20 counts of money laundering.
The indictment lists 20 transactions allegedly made by Sheck between Nov. 28, 2008 and April 30, 2012 – most of them between $200,000 and $500,000 (US) apiece.
The document claims Sheck made the transactions “knowing that the property involved … represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, and with knowledge that the transactions were designed in whole and in part to conceal and disguise the nature, location, source, ownership and control of the proceeds of specific unlawful activity.”
Five of the counts also name co-defendants: Kevin Yaworski, Kent L. Woolridge and Mohamed I. Vohra, who are also accused of “knowingly and intentionally” conducting financial transactions which involved “the proceeds of a specified unlawful activity, namely Conspiracy to Distribute Controlled Substances.”
Sheck, now 32, made headlines in B.C. in January – the same month the U.S. indictment was filed – in relation to the Surrey restaurant/gun incident after his lawyers successfully argued that the three-year mandatory sentence for carrying a loaded, restricted firearm is unconstitutional.
In November 2010, police received a tip Sheck was carrying a loaded gun in his black Louis Vuitton bag. They followed him into a restaurant in Surrey, asked him to go outside, and found he did have a Glock nine-millimetre semi-automatic handgun loaded with 10 cartridges. Sheck was convicted in May 2012.
However, in January, provincial court Judge James Bahen said the mandatory federal firearms sentence didn’t take into account personal circumstance and created an “arbitrary and fundamentally unjust” sentencing process. Sentencing arguments that case are scheduled to be heard in B.C. Supreme Court in late October.
