HISPANIC Canadian Businessman Was Supplying Drug Cartels with Highly Secured Blackberries

BlackBerry’s to international drug-trafficking organizations laundered “tens of millions” of dollars of his illicit profits, U.S. law enforcement says in court documents.



Vincent Ramos, who owns Phantom Security Communications, was arrested in Washington state last Wednesday and is facing racketeering, drug-trafficking, conspiracy and money-laundering charges in San Diego.



The U.S. alleges he sold 20,000 of his specialized devices, as well as access to his encrypted communication network, to organized crime groups around the world, including the deadly Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, headed by Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman.



And Ramos used shell companies and crypto currencies to launder that money, documents obtained by Postmedia News say.



“Based on reports of the RCMP, Australia and the U.S. financial investigators and agents that I have reviewed, bank records, corporate ownership filings in Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong show that Phantom Secure generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue by facilitating the crimes of transnational criminal organizations and protecting these organizations from detection by law enforcement,” FBI special agent Nicholas Cheviron says in an affidavit filed in court.



“I know that to launder its ill-gotten gains and maintain its members’ anonymity, the Phantom Secure enterprise uses crypto currencies, including Bitcoin, and shell companies.”



Ramos appears to own only one property in B.C. — a New Westminster condo assessed this year at $424,000.



The U.S. documents don’t name the shell companies or state in which country they have been set up.



Meanwhile, in B.C., where Ramos started his company in 2008, he owes the government almost $150,000 in unpaid sales tax.