Winnipeg's pink crack cocaine 'matriarch' could get up to 10 years after pleading guilty

A woman at the centre of a Winnipeg drug trafficking network known on the streets for selling pink-coloured crack cocaine faces up to a decade in prison after she pleaded guilty late last month.

Sandra Guiboche, 59, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to traffic cocaine, court heard on Sept. 28. That plea came about a month before prosecutors were to take the case to trial based on Guiboche originally pleading not guilty.

"The Crown is taking the view that ... you were instrumental in giving instructions to many people with respect to this conspiracy to traffic in drugs," Guiboche's lawyer Saul Simmonds said, addressing his client in court the day she pleaded guilty.

"The court will undoubtedly impose a penitentiary term," he said. "The question is the duration of that term."

Federal Crown prosecutors Kate Henley and Raegan Rankin could seek a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

The September guilty plea followed an investigation into Guiboche by the Winnipeg Police Service called Project Matriarch that started three years ago and lasted five months.

It resulted in over two dozen arrests — 14 of the people allegedly in her network faced 100 criminal charges total — and $2.3 million in property and evidence being seized.

Guiboche admitted to being the head of a drug trafficking organization she helped build over the course of several years that was headquartered at several homes she owned in Point Douglas, court documents state. 

Police built their case against her and others between October 2020 and March 2021. 

Court documents suggest Guiboche took a "hands-on" approach that saw her involved in most of the business, from ordering underlings to manage street-level dealers to ordering where drugs would be stored and prepared. She was also involved in sourcing cocaine from suppliers.

Guiboche was considered trustworthy in the drug subculture, court documents said. She branded her crack by having workers add pink food colouring to the product so her customers could tell it apart from that of competitors.

During a series of arrests in 2021, investigators seized hundreds of thousands in cash found at several of the 10 properties owned by Guiboche, along with a luxury vehicle, jewellery and drugs, according to an agreed statement of facts filed in Manitoba Court of King's Bench.

'Crack shack'

Three of her properties on Lisgar Avenue and three on Austin Street N. were subsequently seized and put up for sale through the province's Criminal Property Forfeiture Act. A provincial spokesperson said Wednesday though requests for proposals were issued earlier this year, none have been awarded yet on those properties.

One of the homes on Lisgar Avenue, dubbed the "crack shack," had high rates of activity during the five months police were investigating.  

Investigators amassed thousands of communications between Guiboche and her associates through wiretaps. They had undercover officers buy crack from the Lisgar Avenue property 42 times.

Several of her workers lived in Guiboche's homes and paid her rent, including through working shifts at the crack shack selling drugs, court documents say.

Police also obtained footage of Guiboche and her associates on more than one occasion attending a Winnipeg casino, "pulling out a stack of currency," feeding cash into VLTs and then "cashing out without gambling," the statement of facts says.

'Suspicious' financials

In fall 2020, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada began helping WPS in the investigation by providing financial transaction reports. The reports show that over seven years, Guiboche had "a number of suspicious transaction reports and large cash transaction reports," according to court documents.

In one example, between 2019 and 2020, over $884,000 was removed from several bank accounts associated with Guiboche, according to FINTRAC, and during the same period, she spent nearly $500,000 in casino chips.

Canada Revenue Agency records say she declared $61,000 in rental income in 2012, but she didn't file taxes or report any income after that year, court documents state.

One of her co-accused, Timothy Verbong, was picked up by police in early 2021 as part of Project Matriarch. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit an indictable offence and was sentenced to eight years less time served in September 2022.

Guiboche remains in the community on bail, with a curfew and several conditions prohibiting her from being in touch with several of her associates.

After she changed her plea to guilty in September, Justice Ken Champagne granted a request for a more generous curfew — she can stay out of the home until 7 p.m. now as opposed to 4 p.m. — that will be in place until sentencing.

Champagne suggested sentencing could take place in the spring after a Gladue report on her Indigenous and personal history, as well as psychological and physical reports, are finished.