Juno News - December 05, 2025


Canada’s Extortion Crisis


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

181.4242

Word Count

3,628

Sentence Count

184

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Melanie Bennett and Alex Zoltan talk about a growing number of extortion cases targeting the South Asian diaspora in Vancouver, BC and Toronto. They talk about the suspected involvement of transnational organized crime groups, and whether or not the Indian government is involved.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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 1.00
00:02:16.780 shootings, inevitably somebody of any race is going to get caught in the crossfires. However, I would 0.93
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 1.00
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 0.83
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 1.00
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 0.78
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 0.98
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 0.97
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 0.99
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 0.91
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 1.00
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 0.99
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 0.98
00:19:22.560 a signal to other foreign, uh, criminals that they can come to Canada to engage in crime and just leave 0.98
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.