Edmonton extortion scheme linked to notorious B.C. gang, court records show
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An extortion scheme that targeted South Asian homebuilders in Edmonton is linked to the B.C.-based gang Brothers Keepers, court records obtained by CBC News show.
One of the men charged in the Project Gaslight investigation pleaded guilty last month. The agreed facts of the case offer the first detailed look at the apparent network behind threats and arsons that terrified business owners for months.
They also reveal that Harpreet Uppal — the man killed alongside his 11-year-old son in a 2023 shooting — was part of the extortion plot.
The agreed statement of facts says Uppal was a member of Brothers Keepers, which B.C. RCMP have described as a "prominent and violent gang." He was also a "close associate" of Maninder Dhaliwal, the man accused of orchestrating extortions and arsons from abroad.
The Edmonton Police Service (EPS) arrested several alleged members of the group running the extortion scheme in July 2024.
Among them was 19-year-old Divnoor Singh Asht, who pleaded guilty on May 23 to three of the seven charges he faced: arson, extortion and conspiring to commit extortion.
Asht admitted he was one of the people responsible for "assembling and instructing the lower members of the group to carry out the extortion and related arsons. These actions were based on the direction and instruction of Maninder Dhaliwal and Harpreet Uppal, prior to his death."
Asht was sentenced to 4½ years in prison. With credit for pre-sentence custody, he has a little more than three years left to serve.
The agreed facts say some in the group were members of Brothers Keepers, but there's no evidence that Asht was one of them.
The others who were arrested — Gurkaran Singh, Manav Heer, Parminder Singh and a 17-year-old boy who can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act — are still before the courts. The charges against them haven't been proven.
A 19-year-old woman was also arrested in the Project Gaslight investigation, but court records show the charges against her were stayed in March.
Dhaliwal was arrested in the United Arab Emirates late last year on separate charges. He has yet to be prosecuted.
An extradition request remains in effect to send him back to Canada. Court documents cite Canada Border Services Agency records that indicate Dhaliwal left the country for India in July 2023, but he's believed to have largely directed the extortions from Dubai, in the Emirates.
Uppal, 41, was killed at a south Edmonton gas station on the afternoon of Nov. 10, 2023. At the time, EPS investigators said he was known as someone "high up" in the world of gangs and drugs.
EPS acting Supt. Colin Derksen said at the time that Uppal's young son was also intentionally killed, calling the violence "sick and twisted."
No one has been charged in their deaths.
WATCH: Boy deliberately killed in gang shooting, police say:
11-year-old deliberately killed in gang shooting, Edmonton police say
2 years ago
Duration 2:30
Edmonton police say that an 11-year-old boy was deliberately killed in a daylight shooting on Thursday that also killed his father, Harpreet Uppal. Police said the shooting was gang related.
Court records say that, before Uppal was killed, he was involved in the early days of a scheme where successful Edmonton developers received calls and messages demanding large sums of money.
If they didn't pay, they saw their properties go up in flames. In some cases, there was gunfire outside their own homes.
In Ontario and B.C., a similar pattern of extortion and violence targeting South Asian business owners also began in 2023.
The RCMP set up a national team earlier this year to co-ordinate investigations into the extortion schemes, which police say are connected and, in some cases, linked to organized crime.
Wiretap and recorded remand centre calls
According to the agreed statement of facts in Asht's case, the Project Gaslight investigation involved a wiretap, hundreds of hours of recorded Edmonton Remand Centre calls and the seizure of dozens of digital devices.
Asht is described as one of the "middle managers" in the group who took instructions from higher ranks, assigned tasks to lower-level members and reported progress back up the chain. He didn't directly make threats against the homebuilders, but he was aware of them.
Below Asht were Heer and the youth, who were "largely, but not exclusively, the group's principal arsonists," the agreed facts say.
Asht didn't personally start any of the fires, but his role involved "encouraging and instructing" those who did. He also sometimes scouted locations of possible arson targets and gathered proof that the job was done.
In October 2023, the group began targeting two homebuilders who are business associates. CBC News is not naming the pair because one has expressed fears for his safety if his name were publicly disclosed.
The court document says one man received a call over WhatsApp from someone telling him that he and his family would be killed unless he paid $500,000. The other started getting calls linked to the same WhatsApp account, but didn't answer.
A series of deliberately set fires targeting one of the builder's properties began a few weeks later, completely destroying two fully built homes.
WATCH | Extortions orchestrated from India, EPS says:
Police say Edmonton area extortions targeting home builders orchestrated from India
1 year ago
Duration 2:27
Edmonton police are investigating 27 events in an ongoing extortion, arson and firearms series affecting the South Asian community in the region. An estimated $9 million in property damage has been reported from the arson and shootings.
After the first fire on Nov. 6, 2023, Asht sent Uppal a picture of smoke and emergency vehicles outside the property as proof that the arson was carried out.
Two subsequent attempted arsons were thwarted by private security. But in one incident, a security guard keeping watch over several properties in the Aster neighbourhood was attacked by a group of three people wielding a hammer and an airsoft gun.
The agreed facts describe recorded conversations from that time between Asht and Parminder Singh, who's identified as a "high-ranking member" of the group.
Singh was in the Edmonton Remand Centre after being charged in an Oct. 19, 2023, shooting outside a developer's home.
In a call recorded from the jail, Asht discussed getting money from one of the homebuilders being targeted. He said he thinks it will work against the other one because "he's scared" and while he has "extra protection now … we will take care of his extra protection too."
Singh told Asht to "take that money from him." Asht responded, "We have been trying. It's up to him when he would give us the money."
In another call on Dec. 1, 2023, Asht told Singh, "He is giving the money today."
Arsons then began at properties owned by a different homebuilder.
Threats of arson, gunfire
The court document describes how developer Kulwinder Toor, with Active Homes, started receiving WhatsApp calls and messages in early December 2023.
"You wanna play games… We are going to burn your houses in one night," one message said.
"Wanna play games, let's go."
Toor blocked the number, but continued getting calls from other unknown numbers. Four days later, one of his company's homes under construction in Beaumont, a city just south of Edmonton, was set alight.
Within the following six weeks, two more of Toor's Beaumont properties burned, completely destroying them.
The agreed facts say that, after the second home burned down, Toor got a call from a Dubai number and spoke to someone who identified himself as Dhaliwal.
"He demanded that Toor pay him $1 million and said that if he was not paid within four days, there would be further destruction and a drive-by shooting at their personal residence," adding details about the location where Toor lived.
The developer was so alarmed that he fled the country with his wife and children, staying away for several months.
When they returned in the spring, they hired round-the-clock personal security.
Arsons at homes owned by the three builders targeted in October and November of 2023 caused about $4 million total of damage in total, according to court records.
Two more developers were subsequently targeted in late 2023 and early 2024, but Asht didn't admit to being involved in those offences.
The agreed facts say that, by late December 2023, there started to be a "clear division" between the group members, where Gurkaran Singh emerged as the person "primarily in charge of instructing the team that had been responsible for the arsons."
Lawyers for the three adults charged in the case — Heer, Gurkaran Singh and Parminder Singh — are set to meet for a procedural pre-trial court appearance later this month.
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