Juno News - Canada’s Extortion Crisis

00:00:00.000 There's an extortion wave in BC and Ontario, and it is threatening the sense of security for

00:00:07.780 communities in Surrey and Brampton, but it's not just individuals at risk, it's entire

00:00:13.300 neighborhoods where business owners, apparently almost on a daily basis, are facing possibly

00:00:20.420 having their businesses shot up. I don't normally talk about crime on this show, but I invited my

00:00:25.840 colleague, Alex Zoltan, to tell me all about the transnational extortion networks that we've been

00:00:31.300 hearing about. So stay tuned. I'm Melanie Bennett. This is Disrupted.

00:00:44.900 We're going to do something a little bit different today. I am joined by my colleague, Alex Zoltan,

00:00:51.300 True North. Hi, Alex. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. How are you?

00:00:55.840 I'm super great. I've got my Christmas jumpers on for the month of January. I'm feeling very

00:00:59.160 festive. What we're going to talk about is maybe not so festive. So let's get into it. So let's

00:01:06.500 start with a little bit of context and you can take it further. So a few days ago, police in Delhi,

00:01:14.660 India, they've arrested what they're calling a prime conspirator behind some extortion cases

00:01:20.240 in BC involving shootings and also extortion of businesses. So apparently the suspect fled to India

00:01:28.420 after following multiple charges in Ontario. And so we've been hearing more and more about these

00:01:36.000 transnational organized extortion networks, both in BC and Ontario. They're targeting, I believe,

00:01:43.660 largely or only the South Asian community. But why don't you give us a bit of context into these

00:01:52.200 South Asian community extortion gangs, basically? What is it and how did we get here?

00:01:59.980 Yeah. So I don't want to racialize the story. That's certainly not my intention. But I mean,

00:02:06.060 ultimately, the reason I don't want to racialize it is because even if it is mostly or entirely South

00:02:11.260 Asians who are being targeted, it's still a public safety issue, right? So if you have that many

00:02:16.780 shootings, inevitably somebody of any race is going to get caught in the crossfires. However, I would

00:02:23.500 be remiss to mention that the story almost does seem to be exclusively focused on the very specific

00:02:29.760 South Asian demographic here in the greater Vancouver area. There's also some of this extortion

00:02:33.720 activity happening in Ontario as well. To give you some kind of broad top-down data to illustrate

00:02:40.980 that point. So I grew up in Surrey. Surrey is a suburb of Vancouver. It's only about a 15-minute

00:02:46.940 drive from Vancouver. And it probably has the largest South Asian diaspora anywhere in Canada,

00:02:52.320 and also one of its most deeply rooted communities. And there have been over 100 related extortion

00:02:58.840 crimes and shootings in Surrey. There have been zero in Vancouver. So that gives you some indication

00:03:05.140 of how this does seem to be concentrated around one particular part of a community within a community.

00:03:10.980 There's also much consternation, as you alluded to, and I guess you'd call it like a prelude,

00:03:16.940 that this is a transnational repression issue. So these people, these extortionists,

00:03:23.380 the suspicion is that they're almost entirely non-Canadian.

00:03:26.220 So basically, you have what appears to be, correct me if I'm wrong, so you have people from India who are

00:03:36.520 part of organized crime gangs. They're coming to Canada. They are targeting other people from India

00:03:43.100 or other South Asian communities. And I understand they're largely businesses that are being targeted

00:03:48.420 as well. And then this particular person was caught, they faced charges, and then they were,

00:03:56.000 they just fled, they just fled back to India. And part of the reporting that I was reading,

00:04:00.840 is it, is it, so is India, obviously they're aware because this person was arrested in Delhi.

00:04:06.880 Is there, is there some kind of arrangement between Canada and India? Because it looks like Canada's

00:04:12.380 trying to repair some relationship there, trying to increase trade.

00:04:17.580 Yeah, so that's, that's a whole other kettle of fish that I don't necessarily know if we have time

00:04:21.400 for, the kind of 180 degree reversal on Canadian Indo relations that we've seen with the new Kearney

00:04:27.240 government. With regards to whether or not the Indian government is involved in this,

00:04:33.140 it's, it's hard to say if the Indian government itself is involved. However, it is certainly

00:04:38.760 foreigners. And, and one of the reasons that you know, that is there was an extortion town hall

00:04:42.880 hosted recently by the CBC. And at that town hall, um, officers from both the RCMP and the Surrey

00:04:49.580 police service, that's our municipal police service here said that, um, they, they continued to repeat

00:04:55.360 and reiterate the, I would call it oversized role of Canada's border and immigration security agency

00:05:01.920 in this. And that's kind of, to me, a tacit admission that this is largely an offshore problem

00:05:07.760 that has just drifted onshore from India with regards to whether or not the Indian government

00:05:13.640 is involved. Um, there's a fellow who was at the extortion town hall who made a really good point.

00:05:18.000 His name is Beninder Singh and he's the president of the Canadian Gurdwara society, I believe.

00:05:23.940 Uh, he's a prominent Sikh activist. He was good friends with Hardeep Singh Nijar, who is, um,

00:05:29.180 he was killed a couple of years ago. The allegation for the Canadian government is that he was killed

00:05:34.360 by agents of the government of India. And Maninder Singh pointed out that many of these crimes are

00:05:41.200 believed to be linked to a gang in India called the Lawrence Bishnoy gang. And that gang is run by a

00:05:46.780 fellow named Lawrence Bishnoy, who is in jail. And so he says, it's very, very unlikely that this

00:05:52.480 individual would be able to direct criminal activity in Canada from jail without the Indian

00:05:57.020 government knowing. And I think that that's fairly logical.

00:05:59.860 So if we go back to the town hall, that's where I picked up on this story where I started noticing

00:06:06.700 that it was going on from your reporting, or at least your threads on, on the matter,

00:06:11.200 but you said that you spoke to some journalists, uh, was it at the town hall or after the town hall?

00:06:16.060 Um, what, what, and they were, um, South of the South Asian community?

00:06:21.220 Yeah. So they're, they're, they're two really great journalists. They both have 35 years of experience,

00:06:25.360 uh, working in the lower mainland, primarily, um, focusing on issues related to their community

00:06:32.400 within the community. Um, they, they run a company called wave media and they deal with a lot of

00:06:38.160 South Asian stories here in Surrey and in the greater lower mainland. And yeah, there, there has long

00:06:45.280 been kind of foreign conflicts that have taken root here in Canada, but this is entirely different.

00:06:52.560 And so that fellow who got arrested in India, one of the things that makes this different is with the

00:06:59.200 day and age of social media, there, it seems to be a new component of transnational repression,

00:07:04.560 which is that there's a lot of misinformation coming from foreign media. And on this story in particular,

00:07:10.880 India, um, there are some great Indian journalists, but I would say that generally speaking, Indian media

00:07:16.080 is one of the biggest proliferators of misinformation. And so I would take anything that you read in Indian

00:07:22.000 media with a very, very fine grain of salt, including as it relates to this story.

00:07:27.280 And one of the things that has been disseminated largely from Indian media is the notion that this

00:07:32.240 is Canadian or Indo-Canadian inter gang warfare, that this is essentially a Canadian problem being

00:07:38.960 fought between Canadians. And for those of us who grew up here for the last 30 years or more,

00:07:43.440 that's pure gaslighting because this extortion wave is really, really different, both in terms of the

00:07:49.840 way that the crimes are committed. I'll call it like the brand of criminal activity. For instance,

00:07:54.480 the shooting of businesses and the filming of that, and the sharing it on social media, that's a

00:07:58.560 completely novel concept that we've never seen before.

00:08:04.240 Yeah. So maybe we could talk about that a little bit. What is, what is the,

00:08:07.840 why is this so different to any other cases of extortion? Like, why does this stand out? Why does it

00:08:13.840 unique? Why it, because it's businesses that are being targeted, right? It's not really families.

00:08:20.800 It's not really individuals. It's businesses. So you have the gang members who go to the business,

00:08:25.520 say, give us your money or else, I assume, and maybe they don't do it. And then they get shot up.

00:08:29.760 So I remember the video, there was a viral video not long ago of this car just driving up to the

00:08:35.520 business, shooting the business and leaving. Now, I don't think anyone was in there. I could be wrong on

00:08:40.240 that, but what, why is this different? Um, so the reason that this is different is typically

00:08:45.360 when it comes to Canadian gangs, it's, there's usually a clear, a clear motive other than a

00:08:51.120 financial motive. So for instance, it'll be a turf war where one individual will knock at another

00:08:56.240 individual because, you know, much like in anywhere, any other community, they are on their turf in terms

00:09:01.920 of, you know, the drug trade or other criminal activity. Uh, in this case, they seem to be targeting

00:09:08.560 really, really well-established and I would call them fairly random members of the community. For

00:09:14.080 instance, lawyers have recently been targeted. Um, so it just gives you an idea of the scale of the

00:09:19.520 operation. And also what makes it different is the brazenness of the criminals, the fact that they're

00:09:23.600 filming their crimes and then sharing them widely. But why do we know why? My, my assumption,

00:09:29.360 my theory on why they're filming these crimes and then sharing them is to send a message that they're

00:09:34.000 serious. So that if you don't give them the money. About what? Well, if you don't give them the money.

00:09:39.280 If you don't give them the money. So it's literally just about extracting money.

00:09:42.320 Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, that's purely what it is. And I mean, and what makes this really,

00:09:47.360 really disturbing is that if this is an offshore origin problem that is drifting onshore, as I said

00:09:54.400 earlier, then this is almost akin to like a foreign attack on Canada and the federal government.

00:10:00.240 Yeah. I guess if you have, if yeah, if you have somebody from abroad who deliberately comes to

00:10:05.600 Canada to engage in this crime, to extract money from Canada, I guess you could see this as, uh,

00:10:12.560 yeah, foreign interference issue or something like that foreign, foreign crime. So one of the things

00:10:16.720 that you talk about in some of your reporting is that this is really existential. So it's, it's sorry,

00:10:23.520 it's an existing problem within the criminal justice system, why this is, or even how this is being

00:10:28.240 addressed, whether it's being addressed or not. So let me, let me take a step back here.

00:10:33.120 In your reporting, you say that our criminal justice system is maybe inadequate to deal with

00:10:37.040 some of this crime. And you point to things like, uh, how we handle immigration and, uh,

00:10:44.480 foreign gangs and things like that. Do you want to elaborate on why you're saying that maybe the

00:10:48.320 criminal justice system is inadequate to deal with these issues?

00:10:50.880 Yeah. So I think a lot of it, um, especially again, if it's a, if it's a foreign generated thing,

00:10:55.200 which I certainly think that it is, uh, the immigration component is the most important one.

00:10:59.520 So the liberals, as I think most of us know by now have implemented a very aggressive immigration

00:11:07.680 policy, would that be like a fair way to put it, that we've been bringing in hundreds of thousands.

00:11:11.840 Well, permissive maybe.

00:11:12.080 Permissive would probably be a better word. Um, we've been allowing hundreds of thousands of

00:11:17.120 people to come in and especially those that are coming in on student visas. I believe that the

00:11:20.880 background checks are so weak as to almost be non-existent. And so there is a belief that a

00:11:27.440 lot of these criminals, including the, the individuals who are implicated, but not yet

00:11:31.520 convicted, the trial hasn't started yet. And the murder of Hargeet Singh Ninja, all of them were

00:11:35.520 international students. So a lot of these people are coming over with no background check. They're not

00:11:41.040 going to school and they appear to be just committing serial crimes.

00:11:45.360 Yeah. And I guess once they, once they're facing charges, like this individual just gets in a plane

00:11:53.520 and leaves the country, right? So there's a soft on crime element of that.

00:11:57.040 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We have a very, I guess you could say permissive, uh, judicial system as

00:12:02.960 well, especially when it comes to bail. And then, you know, also in that same realm, we have the issue

00:12:08.480 of giving people softer sentencing if there are immigration consequences. So there's almost a bit of a

00:12:15.200 two-tier justice system component to this story as well. That's worth addressing. And then you have

00:12:20.320 the other issue, which is that the RCMP and the CVSA have not been very transparent about what is

00:12:25.840 going on themselves. So for instance, they recently said that they deported three individuals that they

00:12:31.680 believe are linked to this extortion crime wave, but they did not name them. The South Asian community

00:12:37.280 within the larger community of Vancouver is fairly close knit. So a lot of people expressed deep

00:12:42.720 frustration about that because it would have been helpful for them to identify who may be involved

00:12:46.720 in this, if they had named those individuals and why they didn't name them has never been made clear.

00:12:52.240 So I was curious how Canada is dealing with this, or at least the province of BC. And I found that

00:12:59.360 the provincial government announced, I think it's $1 million in funding to police,

00:13:04.320 uh, sorry to, uh, for, for the police to support the extortion victims.

00:13:08.560 Uh, I guess that's a start. I mean, what are your feelings on, on that actually achieving much,

00:13:14.800 what are they doing about it?

00:13:15.920 Very little, according to the victims themselves. I mean, I, thankfully I have not been an extortion

00:13:22.800 victim yet. Um, but those who have been, uh, victimized by this say that if they reported to the

00:13:28.240 police, the police might park on their block for a week or two, and then they leave.

00:13:31.680 And I guess they get that. Yeah. I mean, I guess it would give you that it's possibly more than some

00:13:37.520 people might, might get, I suppose it would give you kind of a soft sense of security.

00:13:43.120 So you're not getting a strong sense that there's a lot of prevention going on.

00:13:46.720 No, I mean, Canada has long been, um, criticized for its lack of foreign intelligence. Um, a lot of

00:13:52.960 people have said for a very long time that thesis is under equipped, especially to deal with issues

00:13:56.880 related to foreign countries. And, uh, this seems to be a case of, you know,

00:14:04.560 that issue rearing its ugly head and becoming a bigger issue than it previously was.

00:14:09.520 So you've been following this story for a little while and you went to the town hall,

00:14:12.720 the CBC town hall, not too long ago. Uh, have you followed it since where's the story going?

00:14:17.200 Well, I'll just, uh, I didn't actually attend the town hall. I was on my way back from Kamloops,

00:14:21.360 the Kamloops dust up. So it was streamed and you can still find it on YouTube. You can just look up CBC

00:14:26.800 extortion town hall. Um, there was another town hall in Vancouver, which is kind of strange given

00:14:31.440 that there's been zero extortion related crimes so far reported out of Vancouver. But other than

00:14:37.680 that, other than these kind of, you know, community shindigs where people yell at the police and the

00:14:44.400 police tell them there's not much they can do about it at this time, there hasn't been much new

00:14:48.800 development. Do you get a sense from, because you spoke to these, uh, South Asian journalists from

00:14:55.360 the South Asian community. And did you get a sense that the South Asian community was

00:15:02.240 doing much about it themselves? Like how, what's the feeling from, from them?

00:15:05.920 Yeah. So I spoke to Kulji Carr. Um, and she had said that one of her concerns is that people are

00:15:11.040 going to start arming themselves. You know, if you were called the, uh, race riots that came downstream

00:15:15.760 from the Rodney King decision in LA and you know, the Korea town videos where people started

00:15:21.120 posting up on top of their businesses with big long guns and handguns. Um, I really hope that

00:15:28.320 it doesn't devolve into something like that because that will just make this

00:15:32.160 metastasize into a bigger public safety issue than it already is. But at the same time,

00:15:37.200 that is kind of the big concern is that people will start developing some form of self-defense.

00:15:42.160 Yeah, that'd be crazy because if you think about how Canada seems to have, what's not even a two

00:15:47.840 tier, but it's like a multi-tier justice system, right? Depending on your intersectional status,

00:15:53.760 uh, it appears that if you have the South Asian community that starts arming itself and getting into

00:15:59.680 turf war troubles, I mean, I, I, I just cannot imagine how the mainstream media would pick up on

00:16:05.920 this story and how to explain the story. It's already interesting that the mainstream media,

00:16:10.240 the CBC doing a town hall, for example, has picked up on this story. And, um, and I've read a couple

00:16:15.280 other stories in preparation for talking to you today from other mainstream media outlets who do

00:16:20.160 seem to be talking about, because I know you didn't want to talk about the racial elements too much

00:16:24.720 because you don't want to make it about Indians in Canada or anything like that, but it is very much

00:16:29.040 a story about people from the South Asian community in Canada, right? So it's very, very targeted to that

00:16:36.320 community, although it might spill out elsewhere. But so even the mainstream media have been reporting

00:16:41.440 on this fairly accurately. Uh, so yeah, I, I just, I get to say, I, I cannot imagine how the police would

00:16:48.880 deal with it if we had, uh, would it even be race riots? I mean, I don't even know what would happen.

00:16:54.640 Well, I mean, you can even go one step further, um, in saying that this is not only a racialized issue,

00:16:59.520 this is also an issue that seems to be affecting a certain segment of that race. And, and another

00:17:05.680 issue that was brought up at the extortion town hall that I found very interesting is a lot of

00:17:09.280 people have, they've drawn a direct line between the Nijar murder and what we're seeing now, because

00:17:16.400 it really did seem to start with that. And again, uh, this is not my allegation. It's the allegation of

00:17:21.520 the Canadian government. And do I always trust the Canadian government? No, but I assume they have more

00:17:25.520 information and intelligence than I do. They said that that murder involved agents of the government

00:17:31.120 of India. So it almost seems like they did this murder if the Canadian government is telling the

00:17:37.040 truth. And again, I have no information to prove or disprove that as it hasn't gone to trial yet.

00:17:41.280 I look forward to attending that trial when it does occur. But if that is the case, um, then perhaps it

00:17:48.240 signaled to India that our criminal justice system is so sluggish and so inefficient that they could get

00:17:53.200 away with these sort of crimes almost with impunity. Yeah. Well, I'll be curious to see how this

00:17:59.200 develops. It's certainly, uh, I was going to say it's a niche story. It's, it's a story about a niche

00:18:06.080 part of Canada, right? And not only niche part of Canada, but like also racialized. It's, it's

00:18:12.320 basically Surrey and Brampton from what I understand on top of that. And, and all these different, uh,

00:18:17.920 Russian dolls of micro niches all the time, but it seems to be a big problem. Like you said, uh,

00:18:22.320 it's affecting lawyers and might start affecting other people. So yeah, I'll be curious to see how

00:18:27.040 this continues. I don't normally follow, uh, follow crime stories, but I'm really glad that you came

00:18:32.000 onto the show and, uh, had a chat about this one, Alex. Thank you. Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you

00:18:36.080 for having me. Uh, yeah. And, uh, happy Christmas. Oh, happy Christmas. Absolutely. I don't normally

00:18:42.880 cover crime on this show, but there was something about the idea of criminals from abroad or gang members

00:18:50.640 specifically from abroad coming to Canada to specifically target members of their own ethnic

00:18:56.400 community or people from who have a background from that community, uh, with, with organized

00:19:02.720 extortion shooting up businesses and all of this happening because of Canada's porous immigration

00:19:10.640 system and, uh, all the issues that we have around border security, because although it's happening to the

00:19:16.160 South Asian community, pretty predominantly, this has an impact on the rest of Canadians. Does that send

00:19:22.560 a signal to other foreign, uh, criminals that they can come to Canada to engage in crime and just leave

00:19:30.400 when, when, when it gets a little bit too hot under the collar? So if you enjoyed it, please consider

00:19:39.040 liking and subscribing, and I would love to know what you know about this case, uh, which could give a

00:19:45.920 little bit more information for true north. I'm Melanie Bennett.

Juno News - December 05, 2025

Canada’s Extortion Crisis

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Summary

Transcript