A trucker from the Toronto area has been sentenced to more than six years in a U.S. federal prison for attempting to smuggle cocaine into Canada, on behalf of fugitive Ryan Wedding’s alleged drug ring.
Ranjit Singh Rowal is the first Canadian resident to be sentenced in connection with the two-year FBI-led probe into Wedding and his associates — a sprawling, multinational investigation that led to another 11 arrests last week.
Rowal’s involvement highlights a key feature of the $1-billion US criminal network’s purported operations: the use of transport trucks to move Colombian cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs from a logistics hub in Southern California, onto Canadian and U.S. destinations farther afield.
Rowal, 65, was arrested in August 2024 along with another driver, Iqbal Singh Virk, as they tried to cross the Blue Water Bridge from Michigan to the Sarnia, Ont., area, while carrying 95 kilograms of cocaine bricks and 20 kilograms of heroin in a secret compartment in their truck’s trailer.
According to public records filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Rowal was sentenced to six years and two months in federal custody, after pleading guilty to two counts related to a cocaine distribution conspiracy.
What’s more, Rowal, an Indian citizen, is expected to have his Canadian permanent residence status revoked, U.S. prosecutors said in a court filing, citing the RCMP. Rowal “is considered inadmissible to Canada for ‘serious criminality,’” the filing reads.
Virk, 57, also recently pleaded guilty. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Both men are named in a 53-page grand jury indictment unsealed last fall identifying Wedding, 44, as the leader of a murderous, transnational criminal enterprise. The U.S. Department of Justice announced further charges last week, as the reward for information leading to the former Olympian’s capture was raised to $15 million US.
Wedding, who is believed to be hiding in Mexico, remains one the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives and is alleged to be Canada’s single largest cocaine importer.
According to a new indictment unsealed last week, Wedding’s network, in conjunction with Mexican drug cartels, “utilized boats and planes to move hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico at a time.” The group would then hire truckers to move the drugs from the L.A. area onward.
Eight people in Canada were arrested in connection with the case last week, including alleged money launderers, Wedding’s lawyer Deepak Paradkar, and Gursewak Singh Bal, a crime blogger suspected of helping to set up the murder of an FBI witness.
Court filings in the case of Rowal and Virk provide a glimpse of the inner workings of Wedding’s purported transportation networks.
The pair concealed the drugs by carrying legal goods and documentation to show the products were meant to be hauled from the U.S. to Canada.
U.S. border agents, however, pulled over their truck for a secondary inspection, where an X-ray scanner and a sniffer dog revealed the “non-factory” compartment.
A search of Ontario licence plate records by CBC News indicates the trailer was registered to a company linked to Rowal in Brampton, Ont., outside of Toronto.
The operation didn’t always go smoothly. Court documents reveal an internal dispute in May 2024 led to one big drug shipment being called off.
Virk and Rowal’s plea agreements recount how the pair pulled over at a rest stop in Southern California, expecting to receive a 347-kilogram load of cocaine.
Their truck, however, only had room for 250 kilograms.
Through an intermediary, Wedding purportedly offered to pay $150,000 to move the reduced shipment — instead of the agreed-upon $220,000. But Gurpreet Singh, allegedly a leader of the transportation network, wouldn’t agree to the cut rate.
The shipment was called off.
Singh and his uncle, Hardeep Ratte, who are accused of co-ordinating cocaine shipments to Canada for Wedding, both remain in custody in Ontario while facing extradition to the U.S.
