As a player, Daniel Sedin hardly has any negative reputation. He scores goals, and his teammates usually do the fighting for him.
However, a new story involving Sedin puts him in sort of a weird position.
Recently, Sedin took a scenic helicopter ride. It turned out that the Vancouver Canuck was being flown around by a convicted drug smuggler. He is very well-known among law enforcement, and this definitely was not the first time a Canuck has been flown around by this convicted felon.
According to the team, these players had been booking these trips through a pilot named Bradley Friesen. He employs this drug smuggler to then fly around players such as Sedin. The news of the pilot’s past was revealed by police after a photo surfaced of Sedin and the pilot.
Here’s a look into the past of Edward Russell, via The Province.
Sheri and Urquhart wrote reference letters when Russell was sentenced in Seattle in March 2011 to 4½ years in jail after pleading guilty to smuggling marijuana across the border for a drug trafficking organization that U.S. authorities alleged was working for B.C. Hells Angels.
Russell told the U.S. court that he left his criminal life after two co-accused got arrested in June 2008. During the three-year investigation, U.S. authorities seized more than 1,700 pounds of cocaine, 7,000 pounds of B.C. bud and about $3.5 million.
In 2015, Russell’s brother Michael Donald Amy was shot to death in Surrey in a targeted attack.
And in 2014, a convicted killer and key witness at the Surrey Six murder trial testified that he began working in the drug trade with Russell in 2002. The witness, known only as Person Y, admitted he was hired to kill a rival linked to a shooting that injured Russell in 2003.
And it continues.
In 2008, the B.C. director of civil forfeiture filed a suit against Russell seeking forfeiture of large amounts of cash that police seized from him.
The claim said that on April 23, 2005, Surrey Mounties detained Russell at Guildford mall “in the course of an investigation into a possible unlawful drug transaction” and found him carrying $194,190 US.
On Jan. 12, 2008, Delta Police pulled Russell over and found $9,400 in Canadian currency under the passenger seat.
The cash in both cases, “was acquired in whole, or in part, from the defendant Russell’s unlawful activities including money laundering and/or controlled substances offences,” the claim alleged.
Russell denied the money came from illegal activities but later consented to forfeit most of the cash minus $30,560 Canadian for his legal fees.
It might be easy to see how Sedin might not have known, but how does this guy get hired to fly planes? That’s the sketchy part to me. The company that employs Russell needs to be looked at. It also might behoove the Canucks to look into who these players are booking travel with. This might help prevent any further issues.
