Okanagan gangster, high level drug dealer, arrested in Costa Rica

A Lake Country man wanted in connection with a large-scale organized crime drug and weapons bust has been arrested in Costa Rica.

According to Costa Rican media, Jesse Michael Valentino Bou-Saleh was arrested by the Costa Rican arm of Interpol on Jan. 22, where he was living with his wife, Katarina, and their children in the beach town of Tamarindo.

In 2025, Bou-Saleh was charged along with four others following a drug and gun bust two years earlier, described by the Vernon North Okanagan RCMP as the “largest and most significant” they’d ever had.

Police caught up with all of Bou-Saleh’s co-accused, but he disappeared.

There is no information about how Costa Rican police caught up with him, but local media reported that they had a request from Canadian authorities last year.

Costa Rican authorities say the extradition process will now begin to send Bou-Saleh back to Canada.

Following the raids around the Okanagan in 2023, the Province went after assets owned by the accused.

Court documents filed by the BC Director of Civil Forfeiture say that police found 28 kilograms of various amounts of fentanyl, cocaine, MDMA, and methamphetamine in a West Kelowna storage locker. Police also uncovered body armour and 45 guns.

Months after the bust, the province went after Bou-Saleh’s Lake Country home on Stillwater Court, his Range Rover, and $58,000 cash. The home and vehicle are the property of his wife Katarina Grabic, who is also named in the documents.

In response, Bou-Saleh denies that the money was “bundled or packaged in a manner not consistent with standard banking practices.”

Court documents say he was in charge of multiple drug dealers in the Vernon area since at least June 2022.

Along with Bou-Saleh, Dustin Lee Mackie, Erica Belle Arlt, Ranvir Singh and Anthony Robert Summers were also charged for drug trafficking in association with a criminal organization.

Mackie is the only one currently in custody, and the others are out on bail. He’s facing the majority of the weapons charges, having been accused of having 50 weapons including an M-16 type automatic weapon, an Uzi submachine gun and 3D printed guns.

Months after the bust, the province seized Arlt’s 2007 Audi A4, after finding drugs, an RCMP uniform, and a money-counting machine at her home on Belair Drive in Armstrong.

Outside of those charged, court documents also name Sean Kelly Lowen, William Brad Smith, David McIntosh and Nabil Mahmoud Abdel-Kader, even though no charges have been laid.

Abdel-Kader made headlines in early 2025 when his case was tossed due to police errors. He had been found with $200,000 of meth and cocaine in a secret compartment in his Jeep. Police described him as “a bad dude” and “untouchable,” but the judge in the case said police had “deliberately flouted due process” and dismissed the case.

Bou-Saleh’s co-accused have their next court appearance in Kelowna in February. None of the charges have been proven in court.