A routine shoplifting arrest at West Edmonton Mall has exposed alleged links between an extortion network targeting South Asian businesses and a web of auto theft and insurance fraud stretching across three provinces, according to immigration tribunal transcripts.
When Edmonton police arrested Indian national Arshdeep Singh for shoplifting last November, they seized a phone that investigators said held images and messages tying him to an arson in Ontario, a shooting in Edmonton, extortion cases in Surrey, and vehicle fraud in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The material, described in Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) transcripts seen by CBC, included a photograph of Singh alongside Bandhu Maan Singh Sekhon, an alleged “prime conspirator” in a series of extortion‑linked shootings at a Surrey café. Canadian authorities said Sekhon is now in custody in India and has been linked by Delhi Police to the Goldy Brar and Lawrence Bishnoi gangs.
Singh, who arrived in Canada as a student in 2022 and later held a post‑graduate work permit, was never charged with extortion‑related offences. He was, however, found inadmissible to Canada for organized criminality and was deported in December 2025, following proceedings led by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officials attached to a multi‑jurisdictional extortion task force.
The IRB rulings, which rely on a “reasonable grounds to believe” standard rather than the criminal test of “beyond a reasonable doubt," sketched a broader picture of an organized group moving between provinces to carry out arson, shootings, extortion and vehicle insurance fraud, according to a report from CBC.
Transcripts listed more than a dozen alleged co‑conspirators whose names have not previously appeared in public police statements. CBSA said Singh is one of 10 suspects deported after extortion‑related investigations into nearly 300 foreign nationals, which have produced 32 removal orders. Nine further individuals are awaiting admissibility hearings.
Refugee claims by some suspects mean many hearings are closed, limiting public insight into how immigration enforcement is being used alongside — or instead of — criminal prosecution to address the wave of extortion targeting South Asian‑owned businesses in the Lower Mainland and Alberta.
The most striking aspect of the case from an insurance standpoint is the alleged pattern of organised vehicle crime and insurance fraud.
IRB member Azeem Lalji found that Singh was part of a group involved in “re‑vinning," or replacing the vehicle identification number (VIN) on a stolen car with a legitimate VIN from another vehicle to disguise the theft and defeat insurer and law‑enforcement checks.
According to the decision, Singh used his phone to send photographs and locations of vehicles which were then stolen from the addresses shared in his messages within hours. Police also recovered a video from his phone showing Singh and associates burning a white Jeep Grand Cherokee in B.C.’s Fraser Valley. That vehicle was linked to an active vehicle insurance fraud investigation.
The SUV used by Singh and others when he was arrested at West Edmonton Mall was itself tied to a Chilliwack RCMP file involving a damaged car that was repaired, “fraudulently re‑vinned”, and never reported stolen, according to the report.
“You planned these frauds over social media platforms with numerous other people exchanging photos of the vehicles, the insurance papers, the registration documents and licence plates,” Lalji told Singh, according to the transcripts. “You were seen on film burning one of the vehicles and you were also seen instructing someone else to burn a vehicle. This group had structure and continuity … There was an organised method of committing these frauds.”
The same phone evidence also placed Singh at the scene of an arson on a commercial property in Brant County, Ontario, in August 2025, where he allegedly lit a Molotov cocktail after directing others to pour petrol and film the attack. Days later, he appeared in videos of a group firing five handgun shots into the air in Edmonton, an incident examined under Project Gaslight, Edmonton Police’s investigation into extortion and arson of South Asian businesses.
Shell casings from that Edmonton shooting were later matched to an extortion‑related shooting in Surrey three months earlier, according to government counsel at Singh’s hearing. In October, he was stopped in a Dodge Durango in Surrey with three others who were arrested in connection with another extortion‑linked shooting the following day.
Despite the volume of evidence, Singh faced only shoplifting and common assault charges in Edmonton and Calgary. Prosecutors were reportedly working with CBSA to stay those charges in order to expedite his removal as a “danger to the public”.
