RCMP Watch

Peter Small, Toronto Star

A former RCMP officer teamed up with a York Region gun club owner to help a mobster sell firearms illegally on the street, a court heard yesterday.

“It became evident to police that a simple but effective scheme was being employed,” by retired Mountie David Kift and Leon Kruger, co-owner of United Sports Shooting Range in Whitchurch-Stouffville, and their accomplices, Crown prosecutor Bev Richards said yesterday in her opening address at the men’s weapons trial.

The goal was to help Charles “Chuck” Yanover, a self-described “con man extraordinaire” and mobster, illegally purchase guns, ammunition and imported prohibited firearms, she said, in outlining the Crown’s case.

Yanover told an undercover officer that he and his accomplices placed the guns on the firearms registry, then de-registered them after falsely claiming they had been deactivated, and therefore harmless, Richards told Superior Court Justice Paul Rivard.

Yanover has already been convicted in the scheme.

Kift, 50, of Oshawa, served in the RCMP for 18 years and wrote a self-published book, The Naked Mountie. He and Kruger, 38, of Newmarket, have pleaded not guilty to a host of weapons charges.

Wiretap evidence shows that Yanover bought guns through Kruger with assistance from gun club employees, Richards alleged. “David Kift would then advise the gun registry system that the firearm was deactivated and therefore should be de-registered,” Richards said.

When Yanover and Kift removed the serial number from the weapon, “the result was a handgun that was virtually untraceable,” Richards said.

An undercover officer also bought silencers.

“At his bail hearing David Kift testified that he had made the silencers, although he claimed they did not work,” Richards said. “Expert firearm analysis concluded that they did.”

Kift also admitted to knowing of Yanover’s criminal past and that he was prohibited from possessing firearms, she said.

The two accused were among 13 people arrested in Greater Toronto on April 10, 2003 after a 14-month undercover operation called Project PUN, directed by the multi-force Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit.

More than 100 officers from various police forces — including Toronto, Hamilton, York, Halton, Peel, Durham, the OPP and the RCMP — took part, using wiretaps and undercover agents.