Exclusive: Inside B.C.’s Cultus Lake Narco Corridor — How Chinese State-Linked Syndicates Seized Strategic Ground on America’s Doorstep
CHILLIWACK, Canada — Nestled in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, hugging the U.S. border, Cultus Lake is surrounded by towering rainforest pines—a postcard image of Canada’s serene beauty. Shaped by the last Ice Age, the south shore’s cavernous ridges form the Columbia Valley, which snakes into Washington State—sparsely populated, with no official border crossing, and peopled mostly by large ranch owners. But the pristine corridor conceals deadly secrets with geopolitical consequences.
According to multiple Canadian intelligence experts, significant Columbia Valley properties have been quietly seized as strategic high ground by associates of the notorious Sam Gor narco syndicate, operating in tandem with agents of the Chinese state’s security and foreign influence apparatus.
“The number of people—nefarious people—who have places down there, it’s quite phenomenal,” an intelligence analyst not authorized to be named said.
“It’s a very difficult place to do any surveillance on. Not a lot of properties, big properties—and anybody that doesn’t have a local license plate or something from there, they just get spotted right away.” Combine that with its location—adjacent to the U.S. border—and, the source added, “it’s got to be some of the most favorable area in the Lower Mainland to be doing any kind of cannabis stuff or drug smuggling.”
Experts describe what amounts to a special zone of Chinese crime and influence activities—tied clandestinely to Beijing in function, if not officially—a secure enclave where key properties have been tied to covert cross-border helicopter operations.
Many of the properties of concern are large-acreage farms with cannabis licenses dating back decades—once controlled by B.C. biker gangs, but quietly consolidated since the early 2000s under the influence of figures linked to the Sam Gor syndicate. The networks tied to these estates, sources say, not only profit from cannabis and sophisticated money laundering brokerages that transfer illicit proceeds—ultimately benefiting the Chinese state—but are also linked to Beijing’s so-called “CCP police station” activities, and numerous significant investigations into fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, and Chinese precursor imports.
According to one source familiar with U.S. government investigations in British Columbia, one Columbia Valley property stands out with exceptional urgency. Spanning roughly 30 acres and situated steps from the U.S. border, the estate has triggered alarms among The Bureau’s national security sources—not only due to its strategic location, but because of the individuals connected to it.
Chief among them: Sam Gor himself, the syndicate’s elusive boss, a Chinese Canadian named Tse Chi Lop. Of equal or greater concern: a senior Chinese security and intelligence figure with ties to Sam Gor’s upper command, and individuals associated with Chinese mining and chemical interests and Beijing’s United Front Work Department.
According to RCMP sources, the site has also been linked to numerous narcotics investigations in Western Canada and cross-border helicopter activity into Washington State—escalating it from regional concern to a geopolitical flashpoint between Ottawa and Washington.
Among other key figures linked to the property: Peter Lap-San Pang, a Toronto-based alleged Sam Gor associate named in a British Columbia civil forfeiture case involving a suspected illegal mansion casino; and Ye Long Yong, a convicted Sam Gor “kingpin” identified in Canadian court files for importing, exporting, and trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, and cocaine. During a parole hearing, Ye told officials that “a successful person in Toronto gave” him his drug business.
The parole records noted: “There was a great deal of effort from many police organisations from all around the world, with interpreters in several languages and evidence gathered for a long period of time in order to infiltrate and bring down Mr. YE’s criminal organisation.”
Also tied to the property is a United Front–associated “Big Circle Boy” contemporary of Tse Chi Lop, who was named in B.C.’s anti-money laundering inquiry as the superior of Paul King Jin—the notorious boxing gym owner, loan shark, and money laundering suspect at the center of Canada’s largest-ever casino money laundering investigation, E-Pirate.
These are just several of the “many other Sam Gor members” associated with this 30-acre farm on the U.S. border, a source said—individuals who have surfaced repeatedly in B.C.’s highest-profile organized crime investigations over the past two decades, including the E-Pirate case.
Most of the Sam Gor and Chinese state-linked suspects tied to this particular Chilliwack-area border property—with the exception of Tse Chi Lop—remain less publicly known than Paul King Jin, whose notoriety has steadily grown since the Vancouver Sun’s 2017 revelations about the RCMP’s failed E-Pirate probe. Jin later survived a high-profile targeted shooting at Richmond’s Manzo restaurant in 2020—an attack that killed his business partner, Jian Jun Zhu, another Sam Gor leader allegedly behind the Silver International operation. That Richmond-based scheme—now infamous for revealing the “Vancouver Model” of money laundering—is believed to have moved hundreds of millions in drug proceeds through a combination of government-regulated and underground casinos, with links to drug-cash banks embedded in diaspora communities across the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico, South America, and hundreds of Chinese bank accounts.
More recently, The Globe and Mail reported troubling information—verified by The Bureau—that Canadian security officials had clandestinely surveilled Jin and other Chinese businessmen privately meeting with then–Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a Richmond hotel, during the height of the E-Pirate and related Chinese narcotics trafficking investigations in British Columbia.
The U.S. government’s concerns about transnational money laundering suspects tied to this nexus—including individuals connected to Columbia Valley properties and the private meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau—were underscored by a request for RCMP assistance in surveilling several Chinese nationals who, according to one source, arrived in Vancouver on a private jet.
Yet while Jin drew headlines in Canada, Sam Gor leader Tse Chi Lop—who holds Canadian citizenship—operated far more quietly across Vancouver, Toronto, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, mainland China, and the United States prior to his arrest in the Netherlands several years ago. He has long been identified as a top figure in what former U.S. State Department investigator David Asher describes as the “command and control” layer of Chinese Communist Party-linked money laundering in Toronto and Vancouver, facilitating the financial operations of Mexican, Latin American, and Chinese cartels across the Western Hemisphere.
“Tse [Chi Lop] has a long history here [in British Columbia],” one Canadian intelligence expert said. “He’s connected to Jin and the network out here.” Regarding the elite Sam Gor members associated with significant Columbia Valley properties, they added: “There’s state interaction with some key components of those groups.”