Who is Hamdi Lataj, the Balkan ex-bank burglar living large among Canada's A-listers?
Hamdi Lataj is a convicted bank burglar who police suspected once trafficked drugs with Mexican kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and who was targeted in an illegal gambling and money-laundering case involving alleged members of Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
Today, he lists his address as being in one of Toronto’s most exclusive condo towers. He sits courtside at Raptors games, poses online with luxury cars and has appeared in a music video with one of Canada’s most famous musicians.
In 2023, Lataj is seen laughing and chatting with Drake in the Canadian rapper’s video for the song “Polar Opposites,” sitting with surly looking men playing cards in a dark gambling den. On YouTube, the video has racked up 9.7 million views.
In the Drake video, the red jackets worn by the group are emblazoned with the eagle of the Albanian flag.
It is unknown if Drake was aware of Lataj’s criminal history before appearing in the video with him. Neither man replied to messages, phone calls and hand-delivered letters seeking comment on this story or their relationship. Drake’s representatives at The Agency Group PR LLC invited reporters to send questions but did not respond to multiple follow-up emails and phone messages requesting comment. Lawyers who have represented Drake in legal cases did not respond to questions.
Lataj’s presence in the video was reported the day it was released by Albanian-language media outlet Ballkani.info , which referred to him only as Drake’s “friend.” There’s no clear evidence that the two are close, but they do have mutual interests: both are avid fans of Toronto’s basketball franchise, the Raptors.
In news images dating back to May 2019, a beaming Lataj can be seen standing courtside beside former Raptors star Kyle Lowry as the latter celebrated the team’s NBA Eastern Conference win. Numerous other images show Lataj front row at Raptors games, where Drake — who was named the team’s global ambassador — is frequently spotted. Reporters did not find any photographs of them together outside the “Polar Opposites” music video.
Lataj — a 62-year-old Kosovar of Albanian descent — is a largely unknown figure in Canada. It is unclear how he was able to enter the country despite previous convictions in the United States.
Company registration documents list his company address at a penthouse in an upscale downtown Toronto condo tower, where units were listed for rent at more than $11,000 a month last year. He posts photos of himself alongside luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Lataj appears to enjoy the trappings of wealth while also donating to causes back home in his native Kosovo. Social media posts and news clippings indicate he has donated about 200,000 euros to community facilities in his homeland.
Reporters could not find evidence of his profession other than two companies that report very little activity.
Brooklyn bank burglary
Hamdi Lataj has led a colourful life across the Atlantic since leaving the Kosovo area at some point in the 1980s.
Immigration case files show Lataj entered the U.S. illegally in 1986, and was later placed into deportation proceedings but granted voluntary departure instead of being forcibly removed.
Court records show that he failed in an asylum claim in 1987, but he remained in the U.S. until the appeal process was exhausted, and racked up a criminal record there. Immigration records show Lataj has been convicted of several charges in the U.S., including a 2001 burglary case.
According to court documents, prosecutors alleged that Lataj had become involved with a group of émigrés from the former Yugoslavia and Albania who had allegedly “engaged in and planned several commercial and bank burglaries in the New York area.”
In the 2001 case, he was arrested and convicted for conspiracy to commit bank burglary — of a Brooklyn bank — after police found the roof was breached with cutting tools. The raid saw Lataj — whose Cadillac featured heavily in police surveillance reports, and in which he was caught trying to flee — sentenced to two years in federal prison. After being released in March, 2003, he was once more slated for deportation to Kosovo, which was eventually ordered in 2009.
As part of his appeals process, Lataj had argued to U.S. officials that deportation would put him at risk because of a “blood feud” his family was involved in back home in Kosovo.
A 2013 U.S. indictment obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the Investigative Journalism Bureau names Lataj, along with several suspects including ethnic-Albanian alleged crime boss Arif Kurti, known as “the Bear.” Kurti was suspected by U.S. authorities of forming part of a drugs and money-laundering gang operating out of New York. He was convicted of drug trafficking in 2014.
Lataj was never brought to trial in the case, and his name has been redacted from the current version of the indictment. Officials at the Eastern District of New York declined to comment on reasons for the redaction or whether Lataj was ever charged.
At some point, Lataj made his way to Canada. A 2016 federal RCMP document shows that by 2013 police suspected him of drug trafficking in Toronto and elsewhere in the country. Lataj has never been convicted in Canada of drug offences.
Bad company
Reporters were unable to find any criminal record for Lataj in Canada, but his name has appeared in organized crime case files since at least 2016.
An RCMP police file dating from September 2016 shows he was suspected of trafficking cocaine alongside Sinaloa cartel boss “El Chapo” Guzmán . Described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as “the world’s most dangerous, prolific drug trafficker,” Guzmán is serving a life sentence in the United States.
A retired senior RCMP organized crime investigator said the RCMP file appears to be a document submitted to a judge to obtain a warrant.
In the document, the submitting officer says he “believes on reasonable grounds” that individuals including Lataj “committed the indictable offence of Trafficking a substance included in Schedule I of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, to wit: cocaine.”
The RCMP file, in which Lataj is listed as being suspected of involvement in cocaine trafficking, formed part of a case against Stephen Tello, a real estate broker later sentenced to prison in Canada on drugs offences and heavily linked in U.S. court records to Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel.
The document also outlines how El Chapo, Tello and others were suspected of moving cocaine from Colombia into Canada using coal boats. The charges against Tello were eventually withdrawn. (He was convicted in an unrelated case.) He did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for RCMP Central Division said that due to the historical nature of the case file, it was unable to assist reporters in their inquiries.
Lataj was back on Canadian law enforcement radar in August 2019, records show.
More than a year earlier, police in Ontario had begun an investigation called Project Hobart , aimed at dismantling a gambling ring allegedly involving the Hells Angels biker gang.
An application for discovery by the defendants, obtained by reporters, shows a judge granted permission for police to surveil Lataj’s car and cellphone. He is named on a list of “principal known persons” surveilled by police in the operation, which targeted a ring suspected of involvement in illegal gambling websites, illicit gaming parlors and money laundering.
Others approved by the judge for surveillance included Angelo Figliomeni, the man police believed to be the boss of the Toronto ‘Ndrangheta mafia. Neither Lataj nor Figliomeni was ever listed as charged in the case. A lawyer for Figliomeni did not respond to a request for comment.
Registration plates listed in the Project Hobart case files match the plates of a Range Rover Lataj can be seen posing beside in a Jan. 20, 2021 post on social media. To his other side is a Porsche GT2RS, a model that can sell for more than $400,000.
Ontario Provincial Police declined to answer questions about Lataj’s involvement in the Hobart case, saying they could not comment because “the matter has been before the courts and an individual’s criminal record is protected” under privacy laws. They referred questions to the Ministry of the Attorney General, which did not respond to requests for comment.
Whether Drake, in whose music video Lataj apears, was aware of Lataj’s criminal history or not, Alan Cross , a commentator on the history of popular music, said hanging out in a video with someone who had been alleged to be a real-life gangster could allow him “to achieve some sort of cred” — particularly amid a very public feud with Kendrick Lamar, which escalated around 2023 after simmering for years.
“You’re not a rap artist, you a scam artist with the hopes of being accepted,” Lamar sang in one song during the feud, alluding to Drake’s chasing of credibility on the street. “I like Drake with the melodies, I don’t like Drake when he act tough.”
Cross — whose podcasts include Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry — said he believes Drake craves acceptance in the rap community.
The Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters.
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