The security alerts lit up Giedrius Kesminas’ phone from half a world away. Every motion detector was active. Every camera was tracking the men surrounding his Ancaster home.
Kesminas was in Poland in late June 2021, in transit to Canada from Lithuania from his father-in-law’s funeral, when the security app on his phone came alive. The video feed showed armed men, some in body armour, invading his property.
In wiretaps, one of the smuggler’s suggested he had a customs agent who worked in Toronto and Hamilton who will help. Hamilton’s smaller, less busy airport, would be more practical for smuggling than in the hustle and bustle of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
Giedrius “Greg” Kesminas in a photo used as the profile profile image for his YouTube channel. Kesminas has been found guilty of being part of a plot to import cocaine into Canada from the Caribbean.
A flight path from Jamaica to the Hamilton airport was proposed by the smuggling ring — with a deviation to Grimsby that was a backup plan.
Grimsby airport on Mud Street in Grassie, Ont., where Greg Kesmanis told a cartel of drug runners a plane loaded with cocaine could be ditched if it appeared customs agents in Hamilton were going to get too nosey.
In joint-forces raids at 25 locations across the GTA on July 15, 2021, police conducted arrests in operation Project Southam. This handout photo was provided with individuals’ faces digitally pixelated.