Man who sold drugs, laundered cash wants to withdraw pleas he says came after disgraced ex-cop threatened him to protect dealer

A Winnipeg man fighting to withdraw guilty pleas to charges of drug trafficking and money laundering says he was threatened with a gun by now-imprisoned former Winnipeg Police Service Const. Elston Bostock.

The man claims his gambling addiction left him no choice but to work for drug dealers to pay off his mounting debts.

“I was very addicted,” the 33-year-old man testified Tuesday. “Every single day I was there (at the casino) nine or 10 hours.”

The man — who cannot be identified by name due to a publication ban — entered guilty pleas last summer to selling powerful illicit opioid pills and laundering the cash proceeds at Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries casinos.

Since pleading guilty to the two charges, he has been behind bars awaiting sentencing. In a hearing that began Wednesday before Court of King’s Bench Justice Jeffrey Harris, he is now attempting to withdraw those pleas.

In an affidavit, the man said when the dealer for whom he had been dealing drugs — referred to as “B” — learned he planned to name names when he entered his guilty pleas, B summoned him to his Winnipeg home.

“While I was talking to B and getting yelled at, someone came from behind me and grabbed my shirt collar in the back” the man said. “I looked behind me and saw who I… now know is Const. Bostock with a handgun standing over me. Const. Bostock said if you want to do that, I will kill you right now and throw you in the river and no one will find your body.

“He was pointing the handgun to my head,” the man said in his affidavit. “I started to cry and hugged B’s legs and said, ‘I’m sorry, I was just worried about my family.’”

The man claims he didn’t even know what a casino was before coming to Canada on a student visa 10 year ago. He said he was introduced to casinos and gambling by a roommate.

“My roommate did not work and I did,” the man said. “I asked him how he makes money and he took me to the casino and on that day won $100.”

Soon, the man was visiting the casino every day, spending all the money he earned as a delivery driver, and large sums he secured under false pretences from his wealthy father and other relatives and friends.

“It took about three years between first going to the casino to maxing out all my credit cards and spending all my money,” the man said in his affidavit.

He said he started working as a driver for a man he would come to learn was a drug dealer — referred to as “A” — and from whom he borrowed $7,000 to gamble.

The gambling losses mounted and he had himself banned from the city’s casinos for a time, but couldn’t stay away.

“Before I signed the ban to the casino, I had lost close to $1 million,” he said. “Most of this money was from my father.”

Later, he struck up a friendship with a woman who frequented the casino, a high-stakes gambler and drug dealer. The woman introduced him to another drug dealer — B — who agreed to loan him $15,000.

“Right away I went to McPhillips (Street Station Casino) and made $23,000,” he said. “I gave him $18,000 back right away…. He told me that he could trust me because of my quick repayment.”

Over the next year the man continued to borrow money from B “and repay what I could.”

“As time went on, I kept making less and less from my casino earnings,” he said. “I kept trying to borrow money from friends and lying to them to get more money.”

After B’s son suffered an overdose, the dealer pushed the man to take his son’s job selling drugs to the Indigenous community.

The man resisted and continued to borrow money from B until he owed him approximately $420,000.

He couldn’t repay the debt and started avoiding B, who eventually sent someone to his house with a message.

“(He) told me if I don’t come with him to see B he was going to kill me and was saying, ‘I know where you live, I know where your family lives,’” the man said.

The man said he arranged to introduce B to A , hoping they could join forces and leave him out of the drug trade.

At a meeting at B’s Winnipeg home, B told the man he would continue to drive for A.

“There was a machete on the table (and) the other people that were there were bigger and stronger than me,” he said. “Based on what I had experienced, how they were talking and the weapons present, I believed if I refused they would hurt or kill me.”

The man said B showed him a photo of himself posing with a police officer he later came to learn was Bostock.

Bostock, a 20-year police service veteran, was sentenced in January to seven years in prison for a raft of corruption offences spanning eight years.

“B said that the police officer was a friend of his, knew about what B was doing, and he’s always there to help B do what he needs,” the man said. “B said that the officer was in his pocket and that he was paying the officer for his help.”

After the meeting, the man told A he did not want to drive for him anymore and would find another way to repay him.

He returned to his home country for a month and got married before returning to Winnipeg. He paid his debts to the two drug dealers within a month of his return with money he received from his family.

The man said he stayed away from the casinos for about a year until he received $3 million he had solicited from family members for a business venture.

Around that time, he was fired from his job as a delivery driver, scuttling his plans to apply for permanent residency. He sought help from B, who provided him with false employment records.

The man returned to the casino, gambling up to $200,000 a day. Scared he would lose all his money, he bought three homes and a strip mall.

He continued to visit the casino and lose money. He sold two of his properties and lost all of the proceeds.

He approached B for a loan and within a few months owed him $300,000, at which point he agreed to sell drugs for B, believing he would kill him and his family if he didn’t comply.

The man said he used some of the drug profits for gambling, hoping he could pay off his debts with winnings,

“I would also give (B) some of the profits to continue paying down my debt,” he said. “Sometimes I would use some of the money in the casino and tell (B) a customer ripped me off.”

Court has previously heard the man came to the attention of RCMP in May 2023 after investigators observed him conducting “brief transactions” throughout Winnipeg that the Mounties believed were drug sales. Police also received information he was spending a lot of money at the casino.

RCMP then decided to conduct an undercover operation, sending an agent to purchase illicit drugs from him, beginning in August 2023.

The undercover operator first bought two rocks of crack cocaine on Aug. 1 and made several more purchases of crack and opioid pills over several weeks.

The pills were sold as the opioid oxycodone, but were actually fentanyl — an opioid that can be up to 100 times more powerful.

RCMP investigators confirmed cash given to the man by the undercover agent was used to gamble at city casinos.

The hearing continues Thursday.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca