Wiretapped phone calls intercepted during a months-long investigation gave a Winnipeg courtroom a glimpse Tuesday into how prosecutors say the woman at the centre of a drug network known for selling pink crack cocaine ruled over it with violence.
The calls played during sentencing arguments for Sandra Guiboche, 60, were just a fraction of the more than 60,000 intercepted during a five-month Winnipeg police investigation dubbed Project Matriarch, which led to the arrest of more than 20 people in 2021, court heard.
That included Guiboche, who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to traffic cocaine in September after admitting to being the head of a drug trafficking organization she helped build, which was headquartered at several homes she owned in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas area.
Police built their case against her and others between October 2020 and March 2021.
Guiboche’s nephew, Shane Guiboche, was among those swept up in the investigation. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in November for his integral role in his aunt’s operation, which involved using violence to collect payments and keep underlings in line.
The wiretapped calls show the level of control Sandra Guiboche had over the drug network and how she was “not afraid to use violence with respect to this organization,” federal Crown attorney Kate Henley argued before Court of King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne.
The calls played in court were related to the “escalating animus” between Guiboche and two men involved in the operation who lived at its “crack shack” on Lisgar Avenue in Point Douglas. Guiboche believed they were selling on the side or stealing from her, Henley said.
“And people followed through with Sandra’s instructions on what to do when people kind of crossed her,” Henley said, adding one of the men ended up getting his arm broken with a bat at Guiboche’s direction.
In one call, the man responsible for that assault is heard explaining to someone else that he “did it because she told me to,” Henley said. The prosecutor described that dynamic as “essentially a blind loyalty that she has from these people.”
In another, Guiboche is heard asking someone else why Shane has “always got to punch him out,” in reference to another person involved in the organization. That “suggests that this is not the first time,” said Henley. “This is something that’s happened before and this is sort of a constant thing that she’s having to do.”
Guiboche, who is not in custody, sat in court with family during the hearing. Prosecutors are asking she be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Arguments from Guiboche’s defence are expected to be heard Wednesday.
Money found in freezer, ceiling
Court heard the drug operation involved turning powdered cocaine into highly pure crack rocks — which were dyed a signature pink colour so customers could tell them apart from her competitors’ products — and sold out of one of the 10 homes Guiboche owned in the Point Douglas area.
The police investigation into the drug network saw $124,195 seized from Guiboche’s home on Talbot Avenue, where the money was found bundled together in groups of $5,000 or $10,000 in the basement freezer and ceiling, prosecutor Henley said.
Henley also detailed the measures she said Guiboche took to try to avoid detection, including setting up cameras and buying new phones and SIM cards. She switched between phones and changed numbers, especially when she felt “police are sort of watching them or onto them,” said Henley.
At one point, Guiboche also told her workers to avoid one of her houses and meet instead at an empty lot nearby, “because they think police might be watching the house,” the prosecutor said. At another point, after someone involved in her operation was arrested for possession of cocaine, Guiboche told him to change his appearance and hide behind other people when going to her home, said Henley.
The prosecutor described the network as a significant drug operation involving multiple houses — including one where police counted 239 people going in and out in a single day — in which Guiboche “controlled basically everything.”
Court also heard some details about her background from a Gladue report for Guiboche, who is Métis. That report noted Guiboche had to take on a parental role for her younger siblings as a child after her parents separated, and that she’s struggled with addiction to alcohol on and off since she was in her early 20s.
Guiboche has also had a number of health issues, including some related to her mobility following a stroke in 2011.
Her guilty plea came about a month before prosecutors were to take the case to trial, based on Guiboche’s initial not-guilty plea.
Three of her properties on Lisgar Avenue and three on Austin Street N. were seized as a result of the operation and put up for sale through the province’s Criminal Property Forfeiture Act.