The Hongcouver | China-linked crime probe: the Vancouver student, his luxury UBC apartment, and a 7kg bag of ‘drug money’

The handover allegedly took place in a Vancouver parking lot, not far from the Downtown Eastside, ground zero of a deadly opioid epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives.

But after taking delivery of the hefty-looking black bag in the back seat of his Jeep SUV on April 29, Xing Wei was pulled over by police in the Granville Street shopping district, according to a lawsuit launched by British Columbia’s Director of Civil Forfeiture last week.

Inside the car with Wei were his wife and son. Inside the bag was C$140,000 (US$112,000) in alleged drug money, rubber-banded in bricks of $20 notes and weighing a total of about 7kg.

After his arrest, Wei told police he was a student. He was apparently living the life of a wealthy scholar, residing in a luxury 1,800-square-foot apartment in the heart of the University of British Columbia’s campus, across the road from the School of Law.

But police believe he was linked to a Vancouver organised crime group connected to mainland China, that allegedly ran illegal casinos in BC and laundered cash from drug trafficking, loan sharking, kidnapping and extortion.