One of Cameron Ortis's former colleagues once said he was "pretty well given carte blanche'' as head of a national security unit within the RCMP, the jury in his trial heard Friday morning.
Senior RCMP office said former RCMP intelligence director had carte blanche from senior management: trial windsorstar.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from windsorstar.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Illustration by Michael Byers, Published 14:00, Apr. 20, 2021
On March 7, 2018, Vincent Ramos was sitting alone at the Over Easy restaurant in Bellingham, Washington, just across the border from his home, in Richmond, British Columbia. He didn’t protest when a phalanx of cops marched in and arrested him. Speaking to the
Bellingham Herald, the restaurant owner said Ramos “seemed like a mellow guy.”
It’s not mentioned in the account of his arrest, but the first thing officers likely did after they cuffed Ramos was reach into his pocket and grab his BlackBerry. That device, and the network it connected to, was at the heart of a sprawling FBI indictment that accused Ramos of racketeering activity involving gambling, money laundering, and drug trafficking. But that doesn’t quite cover the scale of his operation.