A repeat offender was found guilty of possessing over $90,000 worth of fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking.
Kerry Chang had his arraignment Monday, April 29, in B.C. Supreme Court in Nanaimo.
In the fall of 2020, Nanaimo RCMP officers raided a house Chang was staying at. Police found just over 9.5 grams of methamphetamine, 700 milligrams of the party drug GHB and 62 grams of fentanyl in his bedroom.
Chang claimed the fentanyl was for his own use, and an additional half-kilogram of fentanyl in the living room belonged to a friend, now deceased, who used it for trafficking and personal use. The drugs were cut with caffeine in separate plastic baggies. A credit card in Chang’s name was on top of an electronic scale.
Judge Robin Baird, in his decision, said that the amount of fentanyl found would have been around $10,000 purchased in bulk, but in 0.1-gram doses, the return would have been over $90,000.
Chang told the court he had a “raging” fentanyl addiction and first began to abuse it in an attempt to manage severe pain from injures due to a motorcycle accident earlier that year. He said that while he used to deal the drug, he stopped after the accident. At the time of the bust, he said his home had deteriorated to the point where multiple people came into the home to deal and recreationally use drugs.
The raid was conducted after the RCMP received a report from the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre about Chang talking with an inmate over the phone about trafficking during a phone call that was being recorded.
While the accused said this was before he quit dealing, the judge was not convinced.
“I do not for a second believe that Mr. Chang suddenly stopped trafficking fentanyl because [of] his car accident. I accept that he was seriously injured, and that he must have been laid up pretty substantially for a while. But the business of receiving wholesale fentanyl from [his dealer] and peddling it from his living room required no great mobility, a fact eventually conceded by Mr. Chang during cross-examination,” Baird said. “If he was able to prepare breakfast, as he claims to have been doing when the [emergency response team] members came into the house, he could also mix fentanyl with caffeine and put it in bags for re-sale.”
The judge also expressed doubt that his friend would have left $90,000 worth of fentanyl on the living room table, saying that “no drug dealer in his right mind would leave inventory of this value unattended, especially in a house full of fentanyl addicts.”
While Baird accepted that Chang had intended to consume some of the fentanyl, he said he had no hesitation in concluding that most of it was to be sold.
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Chang is a repeat offender with past charges that include possession with the purpose of trafficking. In February, 2020, he was arrested along with two other Nanaimo men as part of an investigation into “dark-web” drug trafficking.
In 2017, his 16-year-old daughter, Makayla Chang, was the victim in a high-profile murder case.
Kerry Chang’s sentencing date has yet to be set.
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