Kinahan Cartel smuggling network infiltrated by DEA agent in sting operation

The unnamed agent was used to set up an elaborate sting operation on one of the Kinahan’s key allies, where the DEA switched a shipment of crystal meth with fake drugs which were then exported to Australia.

The operation began when the DEA recruited an informant – known only by the code name ‘Queen’ – in Turkey in June 2022, months before 2.2 tonnes of cocaine would be seized from the MV Matthew off the coast of Co Cork.

Queen then forged ties with an alleged Canadian drugs trafficker, Opinder Singh Sian, who is suspected of moving shipments of drugs through ports across the world.

As part of the elaborate sting, Queen introduced Sian to an undercover DEA agent who offered to facilitate large drug shipments through the Port of Long Beach in the US.

Details of the stunning policing operation were revealed following last month’s arrest of Sian, in Nevada in the US and were first reported by the Sunday Times.

Sian, who previously survived two hit attempts in Canada in 2008 and 2011, was brought before a court in California where he was charged with trafficking shipments of methamphetamine to Australia from a port in Long Beach in 2023.

According to evidence from the DEA, Sian told an undercover agent that he worked with “Irish organized crime, specifically, the Kinahan family, Italian organized crime, and other Canadian organized crime groups.”

“Sian also explained that he obtained drugs through contacts with drug cartels in Mexico and South America. Sian again stated that he worked with a known drug kingpin based out of Turkey,

The DEA claim Queen, Sian and the undercover agent met face-to-face at a restaurant in Manhattan Beach, California, in March 2023.

During that meeting, they struck a deal to traffic methamphetamine to Australia.

However instead of smuggling the drugs, the DEA put in place an elaborate sting operation where agents created a staged shipment of methamphetamine through a safehouse­ in Pomona, California.

The DEA intercepted the drugs shipment arranged by Sian and substituted them with a decoy batch which was then sent onto Australia.

Using a GPS-tracked, Australian police were able to follow the container when it arrived to a suspected stash house in Sydney.

DEA agents were able to identify multiple aliases used by figures involved in the network which used encrypted apps to communicate and stretched from Dubai to Istanbul.

In court documents, the DEA claimed they “saw an opportunity to “insert a confidential source (CS-1) playing the role of an international transportation coordinator into an international drug trafficking organization that needed help transporting drugs from Southern California to Australia and other destinations.

“Sian and CS-1 subsequently held several in-person meetings and communicated via phone calls and the Threema messaging application in order to coordinate multiple deliveries of methamphetamine from co-conspirators to CS-1 in Southern California for shipment to Australia,” said the complaint, signed by DEA special agent Albert Polito.

Court records also detail how Sian plotted with Queen to expand the network’s trafficking operations by shipping chemicals to produce fentanyl in the US.

Sian allegedly told Queen he could get shipments from China of the precursor chemicals and arranged for a sit-down in a Vancouver coffee shop between Queen and two of his associates who run a Canadian trucking company

Last month, a Nevada judge ordered Sian held in custody pending his transfer to California saying that his criminal gang “is alleged to have ties to international hitmen.”