True Patriot Love - Extortion Exploding in Ontario： Who’s Behind It？

00:00:00.000 welcome back to TPL media ladies and gentlemen I am a little Brady Wedham and I'm sitting down

00:00:09.900 today crunching the numbers of extortion in Ontario now before I started the day I didn't

00:00:15.240 know anything about the extortion problems that are going in Ontario but I spent the past two

00:00:18.780 hours crunching this down looking at these numbers and oh my goodness it seems like we

00:00:23.160 have a bit of a problem here to discuss this with me is our local journalist Jeremy Grimaldi from

00:00:29.700 TPL Media, thanks Jeremy for coming

00:00:31.820 in to let me ask some questions about extortion

00:00:33.820 in Ontario. Always glad to be here.

00:00:36.160 Well, okay. Extortion is

00:00:37.820 exploding in Ontario, especially the

00:00:39.680 GTA. It seems to be Brampton and

00:00:41.720 Peel Region seem to be the biggest problems.

00:00:44.340 Before I open up and start

00:00:45.800 asking you crazy questions from some of these

00:00:47.660 facts I have in front of me,

00:00:49.720 what do you know about the rise of extortion

00:00:51.940 in Ontario and is the number

00:00:53.620 500% increase

00:00:55.820 since 2012? Is that a true number?

00:00:58.700 I don't know that exact number, but I'm sure it's accurate.

00:01:01.860 The numbers have exploded for sure.

00:01:04.520 Okay.

00:01:04.740 In part because there was almost no extortion prior to this issue coming to light.

00:01:11.400 So, you know, you may have heard of extortion back in the day where mobsters go to local stores and say, hey, you need protection.

00:01:21.340 I'll give you protection.

00:01:22.840 You just got to pay me.

00:01:23.840 So it's sort of one of those one of those tricks of organized crime where they you're actually protecting themselves, the business owners from themselves.

00:01:32.880 So it's the lay down or stay down mentality.

00:01:35.320 Yeah. So like pay us or or you're going to need protection.

00:01:39.040 If you pay, if you do pay us, then you don't need protection, protection against who.

00:01:44.360 That's the question. So that's the traditional type of extortion that we we've seen or been aware of.

00:01:50.080 it dwindled down to almost zero by the time before the before covet at some point in 2023

00:01:56.800 i believe justin trudeau stood up in the house of commons and told the country that there are

00:02:04.640 credible uh there are there's credible information that india was involved in in murder of a um

00:02:15.280 of a sikh activist um and after that um things kind of went cockeyed in terms of relations with

00:02:23.600 india okay and that's when the rcmp identified that the extortions began and since then it's

00:02:30.560 it's blown up now nobody really knows if it's uh all down to uh one gang which which is what some

00:02:40.800 people believe or if there's copycats out there who have seen the this lawrence bishnoy gang in

00:02:48.240 india have success and they're now picking up the torch and doing it themselves and claiming that

00:02:54.480 they're from the lawrence bishnoy gang so it's almost like they paved the way and then that

00:02:58.880 there's a potential that a whole bunch of other groups maybe loose groups or maybe heavily

00:03:03.120 structured everything in between kind of seen this and maybe they've latched onto it now this

00:03:07.280 This is why we're seeing the crazy increase.

00:03:10.420 Possibly.

00:03:11.160 Jeremy, there's 400 cases in one year reported as of last year.

00:03:15.140 Yeah, yeah.

00:03:16.280 Brampton is the home of extortion in Ontario.

00:03:19.860 It's also going on out in BC, out in Alberta, in Surrey and Edmonton.

00:03:26.420 But in Ontario, it's become quite a problem.

00:03:30.540 Now, the implication by the statement by the RCMP that that the extortion began after Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons and said these comments is that the Indian government is somehow involved and and allegedly using Lawrence Bishnoi as a proxy to commit these crimes from India.

00:03:51.760 And now and that's that's where we don't know what's happening in terms of people on the ground here, because they could either be working for Lawrence Bishnoi directly or working for themselves and using Lawrence Bishnoi as a as a cover for their activities.

00:04:09.680 Well, City News in Toronto specifically said that there's 190 targeted businesses that got this last year.

00:04:17.480 So these are small businesses.

00:04:19.280 These aren't just massive corporations that are being extorted.

00:04:22.600 These are small businesses.

00:04:23.700 And you did say Brampton and Peel Region seem to be the problem around here in the GTA in Ontario.

00:04:30.060 And the demands for cash seem to be as low as $50,000 all the way up to $500,000.

00:04:34.940 So if you're a small business and somebody's trying to store $500,000 out of you, that's it.

00:04:41.300 You're done.

00:04:42.160 Yeah, and we've seen a lot of different reactions to this.

00:04:46.140 We've seen people go underground, close their businesses, move out of their homes, move into hotels.

00:04:55.040 We've seen, allegedly, from people I've spoken to, we've seen people pay.

00:04:59.200 Some people pay.

00:04:59.940 Yeah.

00:05:00.660 And the result of that has been twofold.

00:05:03.680 Either the payment works and the threats stop or the payments go through and six months later, the threats begin again because they know they have a willing party.

00:05:15.620 Well, there's been everything from arson to drive-bys to physical shootings.

00:05:20.040 We're seeing a little bit of everything.

00:05:21.800 So they're starting from threats, family members, businesses, et cetera, et cetera, and they're actually turning real.

00:05:27.540 So these people that aren't, they're not answering or they're brushing this off.

00:05:31.160 it sounds like they're actually getting some sort of retaliation from these people.

00:05:34.260 These aren't just false threats.

00:05:35.520 These aren't just falling flat.

00:05:36.960 They're actually following through with it.

00:05:38.820 And the reports from City News is that many victims aren't reporting this 0.89

00:05:43.420 because they're immigrants that don't want to go back home

00:05:47.300 or put a spotlight on them.

00:05:48.760 They're just trying to get by.

00:05:50.140 So that could be another reason why some of these reports

00:05:52.040 may actually be lower than what's being reported.

00:05:54.940 Yeah.

00:05:55.340 Oh, people don't often report extortion

00:05:58.040 because they don't trust the police. 1.00

00:06:01.160 A lot of them are foreigners or at least immigrants. 1.00

00:06:04.880 Either they don't trust the police, they want the problem to just go away, 1.00

00:06:08.540 they want to deal with it themselves, they don't want to escalate things,

00:06:13.200 they want to ignore the problem, and the threats remain.

00:06:19.400 Now, action is often taken, in terms of shootings and arson,

00:06:24.600 they're taken a small minority of the time, but they are still happening.

00:06:31.160 And the whole purpose of threats is to scare people.

00:06:36.840 The purpose of carrying out the threats is to show people that, hey, we're not joking around.

00:06:42.880 And that's why news reports are so important here because the fear reverberates.

00:06:48.240 Once you put out a news report about a threat being actualized and someone's home being shot or an arson, everyone in the community finds out and they realize that these guys aren't joking around.

00:07:00.080 So if you just had a bunch of threats without action,

00:07:03.220 the issue may subside because people don't believe

00:07:06.620 that anything's going to happen to them.

00:07:08.420 But there have been shootings, there's been arsions,

00:07:10.720 there's been a couple of murders that have been tied to this.

00:07:13.400 We're unaware if it's directly tied or not,

00:07:16.720 but there has been one or two murders associated to extortion and threats.

00:07:23.200 Now, I'm nowhere near an expert on this matter of these situations.

00:07:28.200 I'm a two-hour expert, like I told you at the beginning of the show.

00:07:31.840 In your opinion, how organized is this?

00:07:34.360 Do you think this is more just filling in of loose groups,

00:07:36.940 or do we think that this is more of a structured kind of almost a business in itself?

00:07:43.140 Again, the RCMP is not completely aware.

00:07:47.060 One thing that we know is that it started in one way.

00:07:51.320 It's evolved a lot.

00:07:52.700 So, you know, some people believe it's the Indian government that's doing this to get back at people that want to separate Punjab from India.

00:08:05.720 Some people think it's threats against six.

00:08:08.540 Some people believe it's local players that are doing this after threats came from India originally.

00:08:18.080 So we don't really know what's happening.

00:08:20.380 what we can do is is is guess speculate estimate we can work off the numbers to see that

00:08:27.860 yes the threats are often coming from another country um and that's part of the reason why

00:08:34.540 whatsapp is so popular in terms of these extortions we also know that the problem isn't going away

00:08:41.480 even now that canada has tried to normalize relations with india the problem persists

00:08:48.540 we're going to see what happens next um and we also know that um that a lot of the times it's

00:08:58.140 six being targeted why do you think that is well there's a there's a there's a a separation movement

00:09:08.120 going on in india uh six separation movement in india and a lot of people that's carrying over

00:09:14.940 year yeah the the the the fights in the homeland of have come to canada india says that canada is

00:09:22.220 harboring sick terrorists uh a lot of six say that we're we're doing peaceful activities and

00:09:29.260 and there's probably truth to both of those statements right you know those are really hard

00:09:34.460 to talk about uh because there is such a deep history involved in this just like you know i a

00:09:41.820 lot of us are immigrants all our parents have um fights from the home country that have gone back

00:09:48.380 centuries um and and so it's it's difficult to talk about um in terms of in terms of this but

00:09:56.780 we do know that uh the canadian government the rcmp believe that this is this is international

00:10:04.140 criminality, which I don't know if it's right in any, no matter what's gone on in the background.

00:10:12.000 Well, I'll tell you, there was, as of last year, there were 70 removal orders issued,

00:10:16.920 right, for these targets. And 35 deportations already were carried out. And that's reported

00:10:23.060 by City News again. That seems very low. Yeah. Right? So yes, half. That's great. We had 70

00:10:33.060 reported cases and we got it with 35 of them and had been deported that means they're out of the

00:10:36.540 country we don't have to worry about this problem anymore but it does seem very low if we're talking

00:10:40.160 about how high these numbers are arising it's interesting because um the bishnoi gang was

00:10:46.500 recently deemed a terrorist organization so that allows the rcmp to take extra steps when

00:10:54.600 investigating but extortion that's what makes it such a sort of interesting crime is that extortion

00:11:01.040 is very difficult to investigate um and and and to deport someone you need evidence evidence is

00:11:10.240 hard to gather it's very expensive it's difficult to gather it's also difficult to point the finger

00:11:16.040 at one person so uh that's why i would suggest that there's so few that are being deported is

00:11:23.520 because it's it's it's hard to identify the that the targets well and i've got a i have a few stats

00:11:29.580 hear that too will add to that uh as to why this may be a little bit harder than most people would

00:11:34.340 think now the authorities are starting to treat extortion not just as a crime anymore this is a

00:11:38.640 national security threat like you said um and this is more than just an organized crime issue

00:11:43.800 this is becoming an actual threat law enforcement challenges here's the here's the big challenges

00:11:49.040 it takes digital access to get digital access takes 20 to 45 days for the local authority that

00:11:55.520 means 45 days of digging on whatsapp to be able to get access to it to be able to open up the

00:11:59.320 encryption, et cetera, et cetera.

00:12:01.300 Criminals are operating instantly within a day or two,

00:12:03.860 which means they're doing an extortion deal within a day or two.

00:12:06.840 So if it takes us 20 to 45 days to catch up to that,

00:12:10.200 it seems like the number of how this is being applied is a lot faster.

00:12:14.760 Like we're getting, as long as it takes us,

00:12:16.920 let's say it's just 10 times and it's 20 days.

00:12:18.920 They're getting two of these things done, you know, every 10 days.

00:12:22.240 And we're still trying to figure out what happened on the first day.

00:12:26.020 Well, that is a big part of the problem.

00:12:28.740 i've spoken to experts that have talked a bit about policing and this is a really interesting

00:12:34.280 conversation because you don't think about policing uh in this way but when you when you

00:12:40.280 do think about it you kind of realize that he's got a point you know canadian police are trained

00:12:46.140 to do show up to someone's house and investigate a domestic okay show up to someone's house and

00:12:53.060 investigate an assault show up to someone's house and investigate an arson they're not trained to

00:13:00.960 show up to someone's house and track down an international extortion expert yeah exactly

00:13:06.760 they're they're not trained to get a warrant to search whatsapp this is some this is like we're

00:13:12.300 getting into almost rcmp cesis territory that's it and that's part of the reason it was it was deemed

00:13:16.840 a terrorist organization so that they could do those things.

00:13:21.140 But, you know, that's why a lot of people

00:13:23.640 have criticized the police for being slow

00:13:25.400 in terms of investigating,

00:13:27.820 in terms of deeming it a serious problem,

00:13:30.120 in terms of allowing it to burgeon.

00:13:33.100 But you also have to understand that they have limits.

00:13:37.240 A street cop has limits in terms of what he can do.

00:13:40.920 Well, and then, you know,

00:13:41.820 we hear a lot about the laws changing

00:13:43.400 when it comes to privacy in Canada, right?

00:13:45.280 And every bill under the sun underneath C, a lot of people are complaining, saying, you know, we don't want access to our text messages and our online social media.

00:13:56.180 We don't think the government should be involved in that.

00:13:58.360 But with C2, it forces telecom companies to provide data within 24 hours now, right, with this new bill that's been passed.

00:14:05.680 This will probably help. 0.99

00:14:07.140 So, yes, we're looking at a civilian saying, oh, my goodness, all my stuff's going to be read. 0.89

00:14:10.840 but this is also helping the authorities track down extortion assholes and for

00:14:17.460 a lack of better term and all these other scammers a lot quicker than they

00:14:20.240 were, they had the ability to do before. What's your opinion on that?

00:14:23.640 Cause I don't think there's a perfect answer for that.

00:14:25.320 It's a, it's a difficult topic, but I know, uh, you know, my,

00:14:30.500 my, uh, relatives of mine have a landline and they get, you know,

00:14:36.620 if they get 30 calls a day, 29 of them are from scammers from other countries.

00:14:42.520 So, you know, you have, it's, it's, it's all a balance and, and allowing, allowing people to

00:14:49.360 snoop on, on international groups like this. Is that worth us giving up a bit of our civil rights?

00:14:57.720 I don't really know. It's a difficult question to ask, but I would say that the government has

00:15:03.860 got it right in the past and hopefully they get it right again.

00:15:06.620 Well, I have an interesting report from the Times of India, and we were talking about the Indian government.

00:15:12.460 They think that this is insider corruption, that this is how this is happening.

00:15:17.520 They reported that.

00:15:18.380 They think that this is police services or whoever is part of this actual problem.

00:15:23.880 What's your take on that?

00:15:25.620 Like, I know we've seen the GTA, the police scandal that went on with that.

00:15:28.680 I don't know if that ties to this or not, but it does seem like we do have a problem with some of our internal authorities

00:15:35.800 being compromised yeah i i mean i don't think that you know what what we saw with some of that

00:15:43.600 police action was the police providing information to uh the underworld yeah and we didn't see police

00:15:53.180 actually committing the crimes themselves in terms of the violence or going to people's homes which

00:15:58.480 i don't think they would be i know that's that is that's a whole nother level that's america's 0.97

00:16:02.780 dumbest criminals canadians that's something you see in sort of banana republics yeah um so i don't 0.95

00:16:08.160 think we're at that level you know the indian government um there's there's a lot of evidence 0.99

00:16:14.720 that that they are involved that the rcmp believe that they're involved and and they're trying to

00:16:21.120 fight these allegations um some of some of their comments hold water some of them don't um or

00:16:29.420 shouldn't say hold water i said she may seem to hold water um and some of them don't i would put

00:16:35.380 that that claim in the latter okay now what do you think would be so okay one of the things are

00:16:43.260 these shootings and arsons and things that are happening yes they're targeted but when does this

00:16:47.660 become an actual public safety concern do you think we're actually going to get to the point

00:16:51.120 where the average civilian that's not worried about being extorted still has to worry about

00:16:55.460 the danger and the violence that surrounds it so far it's been as I said it's been largely contained 1.00

00:17:02.420 to the sick and Indian community like newcomers often so it hasn't it hasn't spread I think it 1.00

00:17:12.520 will most likely stay within that community unless different criminal groups get ideas and start 1.00

00:17:20.760 latching on to it. I would say that the only threat that regular citizens, I shouldn't call

00:17:30.900 it regular citizens, I would say the only threat that people outside of those communities may face

00:17:35.600 is that we've seen videos where guys are showing up at homes and from the bottom of the driveway

00:17:42.520 just letting off a whole magazine of gunshots at a home. I've interviewed people who've had bullets

00:17:50.320 pierce through their homes and come out the back so in terms of a public violence threat i would

00:17:58.280 say that's the biggest threat that that that people may face is that a bullet may fly somewhere

00:18:03.500 and someone a innocent bystander can get hit in terms of of them being threatened

00:18:09.380 it seems as though all of this is very calculated calculated and targeted so i i would i don't think

00:18:18.240 there's a great threat of, of it, of it going beyond the current borders of, of, of, um, you

00:18:25.440 know, of, uh, you know, their focus on the current people, but, uh, never say never. And, and, and

00:18:33.260 also it's proving to be very difficult to investigate and maybe very lucrative. So you,

00:18:39.220 you really don't know. And that's, that's the, the, the thing about crime is every action has a

00:18:44.840 reaction um if other crime groups see this and say hey we could make money this way as well

00:18:52.180 it could become a new trend uh it hasn't been historically uh but you never know

00:18:58.060 now i'll ask you a question and maybe maybe it's just going to be based off of your opinion

00:19:03.040 and you may have uh knowledge about it maybe you don't but what do you know about this new

00:19:08.920 extortion tax force that's being created by the gta police is this to counterbalance what you said

00:19:13.940 just to give better training to cops that wouldn't normally have this type of training.

00:19:18.300 Do you know anything about that group?

00:19:20.280 I do. I do know some of it. It's Peel Regional Police.

00:19:24.320 What they've done is, as opposed to what happened in B.C. is, you know,

00:19:31.020 when something new comes up, you create a task force when you don't want it to spiral out of control.

00:19:37.980 And then a lot of people have said that's what's happened in B.C.

00:19:40.240 you want to identify which crimes have to do with this type of extortion and which crimes don't

00:19:48.360 and you and you want to make sure that if if this type of crime has been implicated in a in a in a

00:19:55.420 certain crime report you want to know that you want to investigate it with all the others so you

00:20:00.320 want to sort of sort through all the crimes and make sure you're catching all all the appropriate

00:20:05.500 ones and the purpose of that is that it's so it doesn't spiral out of control because uh we've

00:20:11.280 seen it grow 500 we've seen 400 in a year where as opposed to prior to this the the incident rate

00:20:20.340 was negligible that that could be less than you know less than five percent so uh task force do

00:20:27.420 well to bring down big organized groups who are often involved and and they also um they they do

00:20:34.540 a good job of getting criminals that are involved in other crimes that are latching onto this. So

00:20:39.720 I've been to press conferences at Peel Police where they said, oh, we started investigating

00:20:45.340 this extortion crime, and then we found it's tied to the tow trucks. And then when we investigated

00:20:52.600 the tow trucks, we found insurance fraud, we found drug dealing. So you do see how one crime can fund

00:21:00.100 another. And the more success these organized groups have, the more crime they get into and

00:21:05.940 the worse our society becomes as a result. So let's say we had somebody watching from the

00:21:12.640 Brampton or Peel region and they're a small business owner or a medium size, whatever size

00:21:17.400 business owner, and they're starting to find themselves in the middle of an extortion case.

00:21:23.400 What did they do? Like, where did they go, Jeremy? I would say go directly to the task force at

00:21:29.840 Get on the horn, right?

00:21:30.840 At Peel Regional Police, yeah.

00:21:32.160 I mean, I think what happens is it's kind of like fraud.

00:21:38.900 When you get defrauded, the last thing you want to do is tell anyone 1.00

00:21:42.340 because you look like an idiot. 1.00

00:21:44.760 You look like you're not safe to be around. 1.00

00:21:47.040 You look like you're endangering your family.

00:21:48.940 There's some embarrassment and pride issues.

00:21:50.520 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:51.200 So people avoid it.

00:21:52.760 This issue, now it's hit the headlines because it's become such a big deal.

00:21:56.340 I wouldn't take it as a joke or or or as if it's going to stop yeah I think they've proven that

00:22:02.040 that there's real violence behind this and that it's not going to stop well what's your final

00:22:07.820 thoughts on extortion in Ontario do you think this is going to get better are we going to see

00:22:11.580 this 500 increase drop down with the implement of things like the extortion tax force with the RCMP

00:22:19.180 and the government taking a stronger look at this under a magnifying glass do you think that this

00:22:25.180 is going to go upward as in terms of positive and this is going to be cleared out over the next few

00:22:30.300 years or is this going to get worse and worse in your opinion um i personally think it's going to

00:22:35.860 get better mark carney's taken a stance on this where he wants to normalize relations that were

00:22:43.420 hurt after the trudeau comments with india he wants to invite uh modi to canada which has come under

00:22:51.120 a lot of criticism as racist by a lot of people. But I think doing that would allow for, you know,

00:23:03.020 I'm not saying that the Indian government's involved. What I'm saying is that the Indian

00:23:07.340 government will have extra pressure on them to actually do something about it. And I think it

00:23:13.980 will improve. Um, but you know, it's, it's left scars. And so when, when, when there's a lot of

00:23:22.560 hurt feelings and, uh, and there's a lot of people being cast in certain groups, um, there's a,

00:23:28.940 there's a possibility of it going wrong. So, you know, I'm, I'm speaking optimistically,

00:23:33.580 but, uh, Hey, that, that should, that should not be taken as a sign that I expect things to get

00:23:40.960 better i'm i'm hoping i'm hopeful but um you know a lot of damage has been done so well jeremy you

00:23:48.620 just took me from a two-hour expert to a a lifetime expert on extortion in ontario um your vast

00:23:54.520 knowledge of of these discuss or this your vast knowledge that is brought into these discussions

00:23:59.200 is not underappreciated we appreciate everything you do here um thank you for schooling me on on

00:24:05.120 extortion issues in ontario and if you're watching on youtube podcast ville wherever it is spotify

00:24:12.240 please subscribe or check out tplmedia.ca for more shows like this or you can download the app

00:24:18.000 at true patriot love anywhere you download apps thank you very much ladies and gentlemen we'll see

00:24:23.120 you soon

True Patriot Love - April 24, 2026

Extortion Exploding in Ontario： Who’s Behind It？

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