Divergent drug dealer gets 8-year sentence

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This article was published 01/11/2023 (722 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A city man arrested following an international drug probe that resulted in the largest seizure of drugs in Manitoba RCMP history was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison.

Nathaniel Cabal, 32, was among 22 people arrested in March 2022 following a joint RCMP-Winkler Police Service investigation dubbed Project Divergent that drew on assistance from police agencies across Canada, the United States, Columbia and Greece.

Investigators seized a total of 110 kilograms of cocaine, more than 40 kilograms of methamphetamine, three kilograms of fentanyl, 500 grams of MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy or molly), 14 handguns, five semi-automatic assault style rifles and more than $445,000 in Canadian currency.

Police at the time estimated the street value of the drugs to be approximately $70 million.

Cabal, who had no criminal record prior to his arrest, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic in cocaine after he was caught selling 5 1/2 kilograms of cocaine worth $356,000 to a civilian agent over the course of seven months.

According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court, Cabal admitted to being a high-level dealer with access to multiple suppliers for kilogram-level cocaine trafficking.

Cabal blamed his involvement on his own addiction to cocaine, but King’s Bench Justice Brenda Keyser, in a written ruling released Tuesday, questioned the sincerity of his claim.

According to a pre-sentence report prepared for court, Cabal reported he started using cocaine after a breakup. Soon he was using drugs every day and gambling excessively.

Following his arrest, Cabal applied for admission to a drug treatment centre, but didn’t follow through after he was rejected for admission into Winnipeg drug treatment court, Keyser said. It was only when his sentencing day was approaching that he began drug treatment with the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba.

“Nonetheless, Cabal asserts that he stopped using cocaine of his own volition after his arrest and has not gone back,” Keyser said. “This would seem to be questionable if his use prior to arrest was as heavy as he suggests.

“Cabal may have indeed been consuming cocaine on a daily level, but he also was able to function well on a daily basis and be involved in a sophisticated commercial activity. Coupled with the representation that he stopped using cocaine on his own, without professional intervention, it would appear that his addiction was not as all-consuming as he tried to portray.”

The Project Divergent investigation targeted and infiltrated five Canadian and international criminal networks after an RCMP analyst noticed a trend in the flow of drugs from North Dakota into Manitoba in 2018.

“Mexican cartel drugs coming from either Mexico itself or Colombia were being smuggled into Canada, specifically Manitoba, and then the intelligence also suggested it was being distributed across Canada from there,” the commander of Manitoba RCMP’s federal, serious and organized crime unit, Insp. Grant Stephen, told reporters last year.

Prominent among the arrestees was Damion Patrik Ryan, most recently of British Columbia, and a full-patch member of the Attica Hells Angels chapter in Greece.

“Damion Ryan is likely one of the most prolific organized-crime members in our country,” Stephen said at the time.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca