Brampton man behind bars for 20 years: cocaine smuggling worth $120 million
International conspiracy to smuggle drugs worth $120 million gets a Canadian man behind bars for 20 years in a U.S prison. Harvinder Dhaliwal, 47 has been sentenced by senior U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny in Buffalo courtroom on Wednesday, Aug 16. He worked as a truck driver in Canada. Dhaliwal had conspired with six others to smuggle cocaine into Canada and marijuana and ecstasy into the U.S. between 2006 and 2011, and was pleaded guilty last month. The six other were identified as – Ravinder Arora, Michael Bagri, Parminder Sidhu, Gursharan Singh, Alvin Randhawa and Huy Hoang Nguyen. Dhaliwal admitted that he helped traffick more than 3,000 kilograms of cocaine, worth an estimated amount of $120 million, majorly through New York, in transport trucks crossing several international bridges over the last five years. During the investigation, 230 kilograms of cocaine was seized. Of that, 123 kilograms was seized in two separate shipments, at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and in Geneva, N.Y. The remaining 107 kilograms was seized in California later. It was also found that 12 smuggling trips were made during 2009 and 2010 involving 1617 kilograms of cocaine. The smuggling was done by making false compartments in the floor of the trailers. The false compartments were built using kick plates, steel tubing and other material as per U.S. authorities. Peel Regional Police and Toronto Police Service and other agencies were involved in the investigation. “Today’s sentencing is a significant development in a years-long investigation that resulted in significant seizures of narcotics, weapons and arrests in the U.S. and Canada,” said ICE-HSI Special Agent-in-Charge Kevin Kelly. “Trans-national investigations like this one help ensure that our shared border with our Canadian partners remains transparent to law enforcement and simultaneously a hindrance to criminal groups.” Kevin added. “The rigorous efforts of our law enforcement partners both here in the United States and Canada shut down this dangerous pipeline of drug activity that flowed from California to Buffalo and across the border,” Acting U.S. Attorney James Kennedy said in a news release. “Those efforts kept literally thousands of kilograms of cocaine and more than half a million ecstasy pills off the streets in both our community and elsewhere.” -PTC News
