A Red Deer man serving a five-year sentence for drug trafficking had to forfeit his $300,000 house to authorities.
Allie Gader was arrested and charged in June 2015 after a Priority Crimes Task Force investigation. He was sentenced this past March after he pleaded guilty in October 2017 to four counts of drug trafficking and one count of possession of the proceeds of crime.
Forfeiture proceedings began in 2017 to seize his 37 Wells Street home and $14,000 in cash discovered during the police bust.
A Red Deer court granted the forfeiture last Friday. All proceeds from the sale of Gader’s house will go to the Civil Asset Forfeiture fund, with the exception of $7,500 that will be reimbursed to a subsequent owner, who turned out to be Allie’s brother Sobhie, for renovations done on the house.
Sobhie loses the house under the forfeiture and it will be sold.
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The proceeds, minus the renovation cash, will go to victims of crime.
“We’re glad to bring this long and detailed investigation to a successful conclusion,” said Const. William Lewadniak, Red Deer RCMP financial crimes investigator.
“Red Deer RCMP’s goal in using the Civil Asset Forfeiture Program is to take the profit out of crime, cripple the financial core of organized crime, and make it more difficult for criminals to continue to break the law.”
In Alberta, the courts rule on whether assets can be sold through civil forfeiture. The court must decide if the property was obtained by crime or used to commit crime.
Gader, who had suffered chronic pain most of his life, was on Alberta’s Assured Income for Severely Handicapped program, which he used to get free drugs that he then sold for profit.
The Crown prosecutor called it a “complicated, organized scheme.”
The drugs included sedatives triazolam, oxycodone, hydromorphone and morphine. About 350 pills worth $2,500 to $4,000 were connected to the guilty plea charges, although about 10,000 pills had been seized initially by police.
After failing to have the charges stayed on the grounds his constitutional rights were violated while he was in prison, Gader was sentenced to prison.
Before his March 29 sentencing, Gader, who had been sentenced in 2003 to five years for drug trafficking, said he was sorry for what he had done.
“I thought I was going to go the rest of my life without getting in trouble.
“I want to get this over with and move on.”
Gader was given credit for 1,449 days served in prison, leaving him with 375 days to serve.