FILE PHOTO.

(BEN BULMER / iNFOnews.ca)

A Vancouver Island man, who was living in a luxury lakeside Vernon apartment and dealing large amounts of drugs, has been sentenced to six years in jail.

Police found a kilogram of cocaine, along with 200 grams of fentanyl, cash and large quantities of other drugs when they busted Parmveer Singh Bhangu and three others in October 2019.

Bhangu was living in an apartment he rented at the Strand Lakeside Resort in Vernon, which was being used as a distribution centre where he would sort, cut and package drugs.

At an earlier sentence hearing in October, the court heard how Bhangu was at the upper mid-level of drug dealers who had been in charge of a meticulously well-organized distribution centre.

The cocaine found in the condo was cut directly from a "brick" of the drug, which showed it had come from the highest level of cocaine traffickers.

The fentanyl found at the apartment had been packaged into 2,000 street-level doses and large quantities of MDMA and methamphetamine, along with $30,000 in cash was also found at the apartment. The drugs were estimated to be worth between $120,000 and $140,000.

From the lakeside apartment, the drugs would be taken to a load house on Old Kamloops Road, where a significant number of weapons were also discovered although Bhangu wasn't charged with any weapons-related offences.

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When Vernon RCMP busted Bhangu in October 2019, Amber Elaine Deforge and Brock Deforge were also arrested but were both later acquitted at trial.

A fourth suspect, Destiny Stuart, born in 1994, is scheduled to stand trial in the new year.

While the Crown painted a picture that the 39-year-old was a sophisticated mid-level dealer, the defence said he was picked up from the streets of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver and had a chronic opioid addiction.

Defence lawyer Julian van der Walle said Bhangu was homeless and had been approached by higher-level drug dealers and offered the chance to live at the Strand Resort and work for them.

Police found $2,000 cash in Bhangu's room, but his lawyer said he wasn't paid well and almost all of the money went to the higher-level dealers.

The court heard how Bhangu's father had been deported from Canada for assaulting his mother when he was very young, and he'd had a very turbulent childhood. He was smoking cannabis by Grade 7 and was addicted to heroin by Grade 12.

The defence said Bhangu suffered from severe opioid use disorder and requested a three-a-half-year jail sentence.

The Crown wanted eight years in jail.

Ultimately, on Dec. 2 Justice Alison Beames sentenced Bhangu to six years in jail, minus 45 days for time already spent in custody.

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