'Breaking Bad'-style drugs lab busted in Canada

Montreal

An ex-chemistry professor, his wife and sons appeared in court yesterday in Canada accused of running a synthetic drugs lab worthy of the TV show "Breaking Bad".

After a nearly year-long investigation, police said Wednesday they had arrested the four family members and dismantled their secret factory on the shores of Lake Baker, along the Quebec-New Brunswick border just 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the United States.

A former member of the National Research Council of Canada and a former professor at the University of Laval, Daniel Cozak, 66, and his son Charles, 26, were arrested at their secret laboratory.

Another son, 24, was arrested in Quebec along with Cozak's wife, 55, who was released after questioning.

Police seized "documents and equipment related to the production of substances," a large amount of the drug ecstasy, "chemical substances used in the manufacture of synthetic drugs" and weapons, according to a statement by Quebec provincial police.

The "highly sophisticated" synthetic drug operation "had a production capacity of 1.5 million tablets per week," they said.

Detective Roger Ferland said in court Thursday that police had installed a camera inside the small house at Lake Baker in which the laboratory had been recently set up, according to local newspaper Acadie Nouvelle.

The sheer scale of the illegal lab was reminiscent of the award-winning US series "Breaking Bad" in which a chemistry professor named Walter White ends up becoming a meth kingpin.