NRI Rajinder Singh man sentenced to jail for smuggling
over 800 Indian citizens into US using Uber

Los Angeles, June 28, 2023
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

Seattle – A 49-year-old resident of Elk Grove, California, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 45 months in prison for Conspiracy to Transport and Harbor Certain Aliens for Profit and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman. Rajinder Pal Singh, aka Jaspal Gill, pleaded guilty in February 2023, admitting that he took in more than $500,000 as a key member of a smuggling ring bringing hundreds of Indian Nationals across the border from Canada and then to locations in the mid-west and beyond. At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour accepted the joint sentencing recommendation.

“Over a four-year period, Mr. Singh arranged for more than 800 people to be smuggled into the U.S. across the northern border and into Washington State,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman. “This conduct was not just a security risk for our country, it also subjected those smuggled to security and safety risks during the often weeks-long smuggling route from India to the United States. Mr. Singh’s participation in this conspiracy preyed upon the Indian Nationals’ hopes for a better life in the United States, while saddling those smuggled with crushing debt of as much as $70,000.”

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NRI Rajinder Singh pleads guilty to smuggling migrants into US

Los Angeles, Feb 20, 2023
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/ A.Gary Singh

NRI Rajinder Pal Singh, who admitted to receiving more than $500,000, for coordinating a human smuggling ring moving migrants into the US via Canada, has pleaded guilty to the charges, the media reported.

Singh was arrested in Washington in May last year. During a plea agreement hearing in the US District Court, Western District of Washington at Seattle, Singh pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to transport and harbour certain aliens for profit and conspiracy to commit money laundering”. His sentencing is scheduled for May 9.

In October last year, The Fifth Estate reported that Singh had become a “person of interest” in the Manitoba RCMP investigation into the tragic freezing death of the Patel family on the Canada-US border in January 2022.

On January 19, 2022, the bodies of three-year-old Dharmik Patel; his 11-year-old sister, Vihangi Patel; their mother, 37-year-old Vaishali Patel; and their father, 39-year-old Jagdish Patel; were found in a snow-covered field east of Emerson, about 100 km south of Winnipeg. The US investigators had surveillance of Singh discussing possibly moving migrants through Manitoba, according to The Fifth Estate.

Singh played a key role in the non-citizens smuggling conspiracy” and “prior to the unlawful entry of the non-citizens into the US, he would coordinate with members of the conspiracy who housed the non-citizens in British Columbia,” read the plea agreement.

To help migrants navigate the Canadian border, Singh used the Life360 app, which allows users to share their physical location through their cell phone.

Once they made their way into the US, he would arrange pickups through the Uber ride share app. Singh charged up to $11,000 per person for his services, according to the report. The US Homeland Security had been investigating Singh since 2018.

In 2009, Singh pleaded guilty to bank fraud and illegal re-entry after deportation. He was sentenced to another 27 months in US federal prison