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Crime

Indian National Convicted in Washington for Smuggling 170 Pounds of Ecstasy from Canada for Transnational Drug Syndicate

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8 minute read

 Sam Cooper

A federal jury has convicted Jaskaran Singh, a 31-year-old Indian national working for a transnational drug-trafficking organization supplied from Canada, of smuggling 174 pounds of MDMA across the U.S.-Canada border in a remote, forested area. Singh—who traveled from California to Washington’s northern border to meet three men carrying the Ecstasy load from British Columbia in backpacks and a suitcase—faces up to 20 years in prison and potential deportation.

The conviction comes amid heightened scrutiny of Canada, particularly British Columbia, as a hub for toxic narcotics trafficking fueled by precursor chemicals from China. President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused Canada of becoming a dangerous center for fentanyl production and export. Canadian legal experts say Vancouver’s attractiveness as a jurisdiction with lax port controls, weak laws, and a vast corporate and economic infrastructure facilitating international money laundering and underground banking has contributed to the region’s growth as a drug export center dominated by Chinese Triads and Mexican cartels.

“Mr. Singh trafficked more than 170 pounds of illegal drugs across our northern border into the United States,” stated Acting United States Attorney Richard Barker. The seizure, Barker said, was one of the largest ever in Eastern Washington, with a street value exceeding $7.8 million. Echoing the broader political messaging emanating from Washington, Barker said agents “intercepted this poison before it could harm communities in Eastern Washington.”

“The transnational drug-trafficking organization for whom Singh worked had identified the ideal, isolated location in rural Washington to smuggle illegal drugs across the northern border,” Barker said. “Today’s guilty verdict sends a clear message that those who seek to exploit our nation’s borders by flooding our communities with dangerous controlled substances will be held accountable for their crimes.”

Singh’s smuggling operation unfolded on April 29, 2023, when U.S. Border Patrol agents detected three suspects tripping motion sensor cameras in a remote area south of the U.S.-Canada border, near Danville, Washington. Singh had traveled from Northern California to Washington the day prior, renting a van in Seattle after a last-minute flight. From the U.S. side, he drove up to the Canadian border on the only path in the area, a dead-end dirt road known as Fourth of July Creek Road, U.S. border agents said.

Carrying backpacks and a suitcase, the unidentified smugglers from British Columbia trekked across 300 yards of wilderness to meet him. Minutes later, agents stopped Singh driving a rented 2014 Honda Odyssey south on the dead-end dirt track. Inside the van, they found the luggage containing MDMA worth over $7.8 million. Testimony at trial established that the three men transported the MDMA from the Canadian side of the border to where Singh had parked the rented Odyssey van.

Key digital evidence, according to prosecutors, included data from Singh’s phone revealing a map and messages directing him to the drop point, instructing him to “leave the back hood open.”

The three couriers escaped back to Canada, but Singh was arrested.

The case highlights a growing nexus between MDMA and fentanyl trafficking, as outlined in the U.S. State Department’s 2024 report from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. It notes that transnational criminal organizations, including the Sinaloa Cartel, are increasingly diversifying their portfolios, trafficking both MDMA and fentanyl due to overlapping production and distribution networks. While fentanyl dominates U.S. overdose deaths, MDMA remains lucrative, often produced in clandestine labs using precursor chemicals sourced from the same global suppliers—primarily in China—that fuel fentanyl synthesis.

Singh’s conviction follows a recent British Columbia civil forfeiture case targeting a Sinaloa-linked cartel cell in Surrey, minutes from the Peace Arch border crossing. On September 23, 2024, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided a luxury property on 77th Avenue, seizing numerous Mexican passports, MDMA, fentanyl, methamphetamine, ketamine, and other drugs, alongside 23 firearms and cash bundled inconsistently with banking norms. Court filings allege the cell, led by figures like Hector Chavez-Anchondo, negotiated directly with Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia—arrested in July 2024—for cocaine imports, pivoting to other suppliers post-arrest. The B.C. Director of Civil Forfeiture claims this group trafficked a range of substances, including MDMA and fentanyl, using violence to maintain operations.

While fentanyl trafficking from Canada into the United States appears to have surged since 2023, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2024 report, RCMP say that most fentanyl produced in Canada was being trafficked to Australia and New Zealand, as well as distributed domestically.

“Transnational criminal organizations in Canada receive the bulk of fentanyl precursor chemicals from the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” the report says, adding “Canadian Border Services Agency estimated that 98 percent of Canada’s fentanyl-making materials seized in western Canada originated in the PRC.”

In another major case linking Chinese fentanyl, methamphetamine, and MDMA precursors to Vancouver labs and transnational narco-networks, the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Vancouver-based Valerian Labs and its head, Canadian national Bahman Djebelibak, in October 2023. According to the report, the company received shipments of methylamine hydrochloride—a precursor for methamphetamine and MDMA—from a PRC-based supplier and attempted to procure substances used in the production of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine.

“In the past year, Canadian law enforcement conducted several high-profile raids on fentanyl labs in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario,” the State Department report adds. “In April 2023, the Vancouver Police Department raided a fentanyl super lab that possessed approximately $5.9 million in illicit drugs. In August 2023, police in Ontario dismantled a large network of opioid producers through Project Odeon in the Greater Toronto Area. In November 2023, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia raided a large fentanyl lab and seized 2.5 million doses of fentanyl.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Mark Carney, who succeeded Justin Trudeau, has maintained that Canada has strengthened security and resources at the northern border in response to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for action.

Speaking at a campaign stop in Kelowna on February 12, 2025, Carney acknowledged the severity of the issue while downplaying Canada’s vulnerability. “Fentanyl is an absolute crisis in the United States. It’s a challenge here, but it’s a crisis there,” he stated.

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Crime

Sweeping Boston Indictment Points to Vast Chinese Narco-Smuggling and Illegal Alien Labor Plot via Mexican Border

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Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

Case details a pipeline from China through Mexico, trapping trafficked illegal migrants as indentured workers in a sweeping drug network.

In a sweeping indictment that tears into an underworld of Chinese narco infiltration of North American cities — including the smuggling of impoverished Chinese nationals across the Mexican border to work as drug debt slaves in illegal drug houses — seven Chinese nationals living in Massachusetts stand accused of running a sprawling, multimillion-dollar marijuana trafficking and money laundering network across New England.

The backdrop of the human smuggling allegations stretches back to 2020, as an unprecedented wave of illegal Chinese migrants surged across the U.S. border with Mexico — a surge that peaked in 2024 under the Biden administration before the White House reversed course. This explosive migration trend became a flashpoint in heated U.S. election debates, fueling concerns over border security and transnational organized crime.

Six of the accused, including alleged ringleader Jianxiong Chen of Braintree, were arrested this week in coordinated FBI raids across Massachusetts. The border exploitation schemes match exactly with decades-long human smuggling and Chinese Triad criminal pipelines into America reported by The Bureau last summer, based on leaked intelligence documents filed by a Canadian immigration official in 1993. A seventh suspect in the new U.S. indictment, Yanrong Zhu, remains a fugitive and is believed to be moving between Greenfield, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York.

The case paints a striking portrait of China-based criminal organizations operating behind the quiet facades of upscale American suburban properties. Prosecutors allege the defendants owned or partnered with a network of sophisticated indoor grow houses hidden inside single-family residences in Massachusetts, Maine, and beyond, producing kilogram-scale shipments of marijuana. According to court documents, the marijuana was sold in bulk to distributors across the Northeast, and the profits — amounting to millions — were funneled into luxury real estate, cars, jewelry, and further expansion of their illicit operations.

“During a search of [ringleader Chen’s] home in October 2024, over $270,000 in cash was allegedly recovered from the house and from a Porsche in the driveway,” the indictment alleges, “as well as several Chinese passports and other identification documents inside a safe.”

According to the indictment, Chen’s cell phone data confirmed his personal role in orchestrating smuggling logistics and controlling workers. Additional searches of homes where co-defendants lived yielded over 109 kilograms of marijuana, nearly $200,000 in cash, and luxury items including a $65,000 gold Rolex with the price tag still attached.

A photo from the indictment, humorously but damningly, shows alleged ring member Hongbin Wu, 35, wearing a green “money laundering” T-shirt printed with an image of a hot iron pressing U.S. dollar bills on an ironing board — a snapshot that encapsulates the brazenness of the alleged scheme.

Key to FBI allegations of stunning sophistication tying together Chinese narcos along the U.S. East Coast with bases in mainland China is a document allegedly shared among the conspirators.

“The grow house operators maintained contact with each other through a list of marijuana cultivators and distributors from or with ties to China in the region called the ‘East Coast Contact List,’” the indictment alleges.

Investigators say the conspiracy reveals a human smuggling component directly tied to China’s underground migration and debt bondage networks, mirroring exactly the historic intelligence from Canadian and U.S. Homeland Security documents reported by The Bureau last summer.

The alleged leader, 39-year-old Jianxiong Chen, is charged with paying to smuggle Chinese nationals across the Mexican border, then forcing them to work in grow houses while withholding their passports until they repaid enormous smuggling debts.

“Data extracted from Chen’s cell phone allegedly revealed that he helped smuggle Chinese nationals into the United States — putting the aliens to work at one of the grow houses he controlled,” U.S. filings say.

“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. “These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise — building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover.”

The arrests come amid a surge of Chinese migrants entering the U.S. through Mexico, part of a pattern previously exposed in Canadian diplomatic and intelligence reporting. In 1993, a confidential Canadian government study, “Passports of Convenience,” warned that Chinese government officials, in collusion with Triads and corrupt Latin American partners, were driving a multi-billion-dollar human smuggling business. That report predicted that tens of thousands of migrants from coastal Fujian province would flood North America, empowered by Beijing’s tacit support and organized crime’s global reach.

It also warned that mass migration from China in the 1990s came during a time of political upheaval, a trend that has apparently re-emerged while President Xi Jinping’s economic and political guidance has been increasingly questioned among mainland citizens, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and lockdowns inside China.

The 1993 report, obtained and analyzed exclusively by The Bureau, described how the Triads — particularly those connected with Chinese Communist networks in Fujian — would leverage human smuggling to extend their influence into American cities. The migrants, often saddled with debts of $50,000 or more, became trapped in forced labor, prostitution, or drug networks, coerced to repay their passage fees.

“Alien smuggling is closely linked to narcotics smuggling; many of the persons smuggled in have to resort to prostitution or drug dealing to pay the smugglers,” the 1993 Canadian immigration report says.

Citing legal filings in one U.S. Homeland Security case, it says a Triad member who reportedly smuggled 150 Fujianese migrants into New York stated that if fees aren’t paid “the victims are often tortured until the money is paid.”

Supporting these early warnings, a 1995 U.S. Department of Justice report echoed the Canadian findings, stating that “up to 100,000 Chinese aliens are smuggled into the United States each year,” with 85 percent originating from Fujian. The DOJ report also cited allegations of “negotiations between the Sun Yee On Triad and the Mainland Chinese Government,” suggesting that smuggling and criminal infiltration were tolerated — if not orchestrated — to extend China’s economic and political influence abroad.

That report added American investigators and immigration officials concluded it was nearly impossible to counter waves of illegal immigration from China with deportation orders, and the government should focus on “the larger menace working its way into U.S. cities: Chinese transnational criminal organizations.”

“To combat the growing threat of Asian organized crime in the West,” it says, “law enforcement officials must tackle this new global problem through an understanding of the Triad system and the nature of its threat to Western countries.”

In New England, the Braintree indictment shows how those old predictions have not only materialized but scaled up.

These networks operate by embedding Chinese nationals into illicit industries in North America, from black-market cannabis cultivation to high-end money laundering. Once inside, they channel profits back through complex underground banking channels that tie the North American drug economy to China’s export-driven cash flows and, ultimately, to powerful actors in Beijing.

In recent years, Maine has emerged as a strategic hotspot for illicit Chinese-controlled marijuana operations. As The Bureau has reported, the state’s vast rural areas, lax local oversight, and proximity to East Coast urban markets have made it a favored location for covert grow houses.

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Crime

Tucker Carlson: US intelligence is shielding Epstein network, not President Trump

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From LifeSiteNews

By Robert Jones

Pam Bondi’s shifting story and Trump’s dismissal of Epstein questions have reignited scrutiny over the sealed files.

Tucker Carlson is raising new concerns about a possible intelligence cover-up in the Jeffrey Epstein case—this time implicating U.S. and Israeli agencies, as well as Trump ally and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

During a recent broadcast, Carlson discussed U.S. Attorney General Bondi’s refusal to release sealed Epstein files, along with the FBI and DOJ announcement that Epstein did not have a client list and did indeed kill himself.

Carlson offered two theories for Bondi’s words. The first: “Trump is involved—that Trump is on the list, that they’ve got a tape of Trump doing something awful.”

But Carlson quickly dismissed that idea, noting he’s spoken to Trump about Epstein and believes he wasn’t part of “creepy” activities. He also pointed out that the Biden administration holds the evidence and would likely have acted if there were grounds.

Carlson’s second theory: the intelligence services are “at the very center of this story” and are being protected. His guest, Saagar Enjeti, agreed. “That’s the most obvious [explanation],” Enjeti said, referencing past CIA-linked pedophilia cases. He noted the agency had avoided prosecutions for fear suspects would reveal “sources and methods” in court.

The exchange aired as critics accused Bondi of shifting her account of what’s in the files. She previously referenced “tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children,” but later claimed they were videos of child pornography downloaded by Epstein. Observers say that revision changes the legal and narrative stakes—and raises questions about credibility.

Donald Trump also appeared impatient with the matter. “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? That is unbelievable,” he said in a video beside Bondi. This clip sparked backlash from longtime Trump supporters, including former Trump advisor Elon Musk, who reposted critical commentary on Trump and Bondi’s comments on X:

Musk previously alleged that Trump was himself implicated in the Epstein files. Although he retracted and apologized for this, he recently suggested that Steve Bannon was also implicated.

However, Carlson’s guest suggested that Bondi’s comments had another purpose. “The lie is a signal to everybody else involved,” he said. “The lie is not for you and me. The lie is for those implicated to say, ‘No matter what, we will protect you.’”

The files in question remain sealed. It is unclear whether further revelations about Epstein will come to light, but Trump’s comments are not going to make the issue go away.

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