October 25, 1963 - Tse Chi Lop
His significance lies less in violence than in architecture — the construction of a trafficking network that reshaped the synthetic drug trade across an entire region. After a US prison sentence that might have ended a lesser operation, he returned to build Sam Gor into a cartel reportedly responsible for a substantial share of the methamphetamine flooding Southeast Asia. Investigators drew comparisons to El Chapo, though Tse operated with a deliberate low profile, relying on intelligence and discretion rather than force to sustain what became one of the largest drug enterprises in modern history.
From Wikipedia
Tse Chi Lop (Chinese: 謝志樂, born 25 October 1963) is a Chinese and Canadian gangster, drug trafficker and drug cartel leader. Before his arrest, Tse was the alleged drug lord behind Asia-Pacific based international crime syndicate Sam Gor, also referred to as "The Company", and a former member of the Hong Kong, Toronto and Vancouver-based triad crime group Big Circle Gang. Despite his extensive involvement in the illegal drug trade and a previous conviction, his criminal activities were unknown to the public until uncovered by a Reuters report in 2019.
A career criminal, Tse was involved with organized crime in his native city Guangzhou from a young age. He immigrated to Canada in 1988 and acquired Canadian citizenship through naturalization. After being involved in heroin trafficking from Southeast Asia to North America for years, Tse was first arrested in 1998 and sentenced to 9 years' imprisonment by a US court. After his release, he moved to Hong Kong in 2011, where he founded Sam Gor and entered the synthetic drug trafficking market. Known to be intelligent, humble and diplomatic, Tse's behind-the-scene innovation reshaped drug smuggling in the Asia-Pacific as he quietly accumulated tremendous wealth in the process.
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