More than $1 million in cash and roughly $1.2 million in drugs were seized from a home in Calgary's Skyview neighbourhood, and two people have been charged.
The Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams' Calgary organized crime team searched the home on July 30. Officers also searched homes in Harvest Hills and Rocky Ridge, along with two vehicles.
The cash is thought to be the largest sum ever recovered in a single instance by ALERT's Calgary team.
What was seized
Roughly 3,000 grams of suspected fentanyl.
About 7,000 grams of suspected MDMA.
Roughly 2,000 grams of methamphetamine.
About 500 grams of cocaine.
About 500 grams of cannabis.
And more than $1 million in cash, believed to be proceeds of crime.
The fentanyl is the number that matters
Three kilograms of fentanyl is difficult to picture, so here's the scale.
A lethal dose for someone without tolerance is generally cited at around two milligrams. Three kilograms is three million milligrams. Purity varies enormously in seized product and the arithmetic isn't a straight line to deaths, but it's the reason a seizure this size is treated as a public health event as well as a criminal one.
Alberta recorded 1,157 accidental opioid poisoning deaths in 2025. Twenty-four of them were in Grande Prairie alone. We covered the province's overdose awareness day this week.
The second record in five weeks
This is the second time this summer ALERT has announced a seven-figure cash seizure.
On August 6, the agency's Edmonton-led organized crime team announced $1,156,863 in cash, the largest cash seizure ever recorded by ALERT in its 20-year history, alongside 66.5 kilograms of cocaine, 17 firearms and eight vehicles. That investigation ran ten months and searched homes in Edmonton, Calgary, St. Albert and Sturgeon County. Nobody has been charged in it.
Our coverage of the August seizure is here.
Today's is a separate investigation with a separate team. The Calgary record and the ALERT-wide record now sit within about $150,000 of each other.
What "proceeds of crime" means for the money
Cash seized in a drug investigation doesn't automatically become the government's.
It's held as offence-related property, and ALERT typically consults with Alberta's Civil Forfeiture Office. Civil forfeiture is a separate process from the criminal case, with a lower standard of proof, and it can proceed regardless of whether a criminal conviction follows.
If the forfeiture succeeds, the money goes to the province, and Alberta directs a portion of forfeited funds toward victims' programs and crime prevention grants.
Where it happened
Skyview and Harvest Hills are both in northeast Calgary, north of Country Hills Boulevard. Rocky Ridge is in the northwest.
Skyview is a newer community, largely built in the last decade, and sits in the same broad area as Cornerstone, where a man was shot dead in a shopping complex parking lot on Sunday. There's no indication the two are connected, and police have drawn no link.
The MDMA quantity is unusual
Seven kilograms of suspected MDMA is a larger amount than typically appears in Alberta seizures, and it's worth noting because it's not the drug the province's crisis is built around.
Fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine are the standing three in ALERT releases. MDMA shows up in smaller quantities, usually tied to festival and party markets rather than the daily supply that drives overdose deaths.
Seven kilograms at street level is a substantial distribution operation on its own.
The mix in this seizure, fentanyl and meth alongside MDMA, cocaine and cannabis, suggests a supply operation serving several different markets rather than one specialized in a single product. That's the pattern ALERT typically describes when it uses the phrase organized crime rather than street-level trafficking.
What "street value" actually means
The $1.2 million figure deserves a caveat, because it gets repeated as though it's a market price.
Police estimate street value by taking the seized weight and calculating what it would be worth if broken down and sold in individual units at the retail end of the chain. It assumes the full quantity reaches consumers, at typical street prices, after being cut and divided.
Wholesale value, which is what the drugs were actually worth to whoever held them, is considerably lower. And the further up the supply chain a seizure happens, the wider that gap gets.
It's a real number for describing the harm removed from circulation. It isn't what anyone paid.
The charges
Two people have been charged. ALERT's release names them and lists the charges, which include trafficking and possession for the purpose of trafficking.
None of the allegations has been proven in court.
If you have information
ALERT can be reached through local police or anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Sources
Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, news release, September 2, 2026
ALERT seizes millions in drugs, cash — ALERT, August 6, 2026
Alberta Substance Use Surveillance System
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