$30M Cigarette Bust in Westlock: 29.5M Smokes Seized
It started with one carton. It ended with 29.5 million cigarettes, more than $225,000 in cash and a Westlock man facing fraud charges. Westlock RCMP have wrapped up a $30-million contraband tobacco case, and it started at a small-town shop.
Alberta Radio News · Jason LaFace
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
How it unravelled
Police got wind of unstamped cigarettes being sold in Westlock back in January. An unrelated call for service backed it up: officers seized a carton of contraband smokes, and the person holding it said they bought it at "The Boutique" in Westlock.
Investigators put the business under surveillance. On June 17 and 18 they executed multiple warrants, seized product and arrested a main suspect, who was released on conditions. Over the next two months, undercover officers made two more buys tied to the same suspect. That led to warrants on Aug. 26 in the Morinville and Edmonton areas, and to a storage unit on a rural property in Westlock County, searched Sept. 15.
The haul
Fifteen search warrants in all. Police seized 2,954 master cases of unstamped cigarettes, more than 29.5 million smokes worth just over $30 million, with nearly $10 million in unpaid taxes. They also took three firearms, two vehicles and more than $225,000 in Canadian cash.
Omar Saleh, 50, of Westlock is charged with the illegal sale of tobacco products, fraud over $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000 and three counts of careless use of a firearm. He was released on conditions and is due in Westlock court Oct. 29. None of the charges have been proven in court.
For scale: last November, a Highway 16 traffic stop in Lloydminster turned up $7.65 million in unstamped cigarettes, called one of the largest loads seized in Alberta. This case is about four times that.
The take
Credit where it's due. This was patient, small-town police work, and the people it protects most are the honest convenience-store owners in places like Westlock who pay their taxes and still get undercut.
But let's be adults about why the black market is booming. An industry-commissioned study estimated contraband made up 29 per cent of Alberta's cigarette market by 2023, up from 13 per cent in 2019, and cost the treasury about $262 million in tax over three years. This summer, a separate northwest Edmonton investigation pulled in more than $29 million worth. That isn't a few bad apples. It's a market responding to prices.
Alberta's answer last December was tougher: fines of three times the tax and mandatory reporting of every seizure. Fine. But every dollar of tax piled on a legal pack is a dollar of profit handed to whoever's selling out of a storage unit. Enforcement catches the dealer. Only sane tax policy shrinks the market he's selling into.
Stay with Alberta Radio for the news and the commentary Ottawa would rather you skipped. Visit www.albertaradio.ca.
Source: Os1ris News Aggregation
