Extortions targeting Edmonton's South Asian community prompt deportations: police
CBC
A joint operation involving Edmonton police has led to the deportation of two men, over what police say is a wave of extortions targeting the city's South Asian community.
Edmonton Police Service along with officials from the Lower Mainland District RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) provided new details Thursday during a news conference.
CBSA said it deported a 22-year-old man who was allegedly the ringleader in carrying out extortions in the Edmonton area.
A 25-year-old man was also removed from Canada and three others are being investigated.
Police wouldn't confirm the men's identities. They also wouldn't say where the men had been deported to.
Officials said some of the suspects are connected to extortions in Calgary, the B.C. Lower Mainland and Ontario.
Another 51 suspects are linked to what police say is a criminal network believed to be responsible for orchestrating the alleged extortions in Edmonton.
EPS, together with the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT), RCMP and CBSA, have created a joint forces operation to investigate a string of reported extortion attempts.
EPS Supt. Robinder Gill, with the Criminal Investigations Division of EPS, said this latest investigation comes after an uptick in extortion cases after the EPS investigation Project Gaslight ended in 2024.
“In the spring of 2025 we saw a cluster of these extortion events now re-emerge,” Gill said.
“We know that this crime type is evolving here in Canada. We also know that these organized crime groups are highly adaptable, and they are constantly evolving in their tactics.”
Gill said the structure of these groups is a tiered, predatory network of organized crime where “the risk is local, the revenue is global, and the fallout is the erosion of the very trust that holds the Southeast Asian community together.”
Kristine Conroy, an enforcement manager with the CBSA, said the federal agency started 372 extortion related immigration investigations and 51 of those are directly tied to the investigation in Edmonton.
“The success of this co-ordinated operation in Edmonton is a testament to the dedication of the CBSA, the Edmonton Police Service alert, and the RCMP, to stopping this evolving threat of extortion within our communities nationwide,” Conroy said.
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A joint operation involving Edmonton police has led to the deportation of two men, over what police say is a wave of extortions targeting the city's South Asian community.
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