EXTORTION SUSPECT ARRESTED

LANGLEY — A man accused of being involved in extortion in British Columbia has been arrested and charged in California.

RCMP say 30-year-old Jasmeet Singh is alleged to have made threatening phone calls to a victim in Langley, B.C.

Mounties say they tracked the man to Fresno, Calif., and reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to further the case.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in California says a federal grand jury returned an indictment against Singh, an Indian national, charging him with transmitting threats to injure a person.

The office says in a statement that Singh allegedly threatened to kill the Canadian victim because of their “prior co-operation with Indian law enforcement.”

The statement says Singh allegedly sent the victim a photo of their car in front of their home, and said that he knew the person’s daily habits, down to the type of coffee they drank, and that trying to run would get them killed.

A Langley RCMP spokesperson says Canadian investigators are working with the FBI to determine “the extent to which Jasmeet Singh is connected” to ongoing extortion investigations in Canada.

Canada’s South Asian community has been targeted by a wave of extortion threats, and some have been linked to the Lawrence Bishnoi crime group based in India.

U.S. authorities say Singh is in custody while awaiting trial.

If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a US$250,000 fine.

EMISSIONS PROJECTION GROWS

OTTAWA — A progress report on Canada’s emissions targets shows the federal government’s projection for greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 is higher than it was two years ago.

The 2025 report estimates Canada’s emissions in 2030 will be around 513 million tonnes.

That’s if all planned and announced policy measures are implemented, such as the planned increase in carbon pricing to $170 per tonne in 2030.

The 2023 projection for 2030 emissions, with all proposed regulations in place, was for 467 million tonnes of emissions by 2030.

The most recent projection excludes the proposed oil and gas emissions cap — which would have cut emissions by another three million tonnes in 2030 but won’t be implemented following Ottawa’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta.

Canada’s goal under the Paris climate accord is to cut emissions to no more than 455 million tonnes by 2030, or 40 to 45 per cent below what they were in 2005.

VOYEURISM LAWSUIT SETTLED

VICTORIA — A Vancouver Island grocery store has agreed to pay $750,000 to settle a voyeurism class-action lawsuit brought by women who were secretly filmed in the bathroom by a former employee who uploaded the images to a Russian porn site.

The case was brought by former store employees Jennifer Burke and Mallory Colter against Red Barn Market and Matthew Schwabe, the former assistant manager who was convicted of voyeurism charges in 2021.

He had pleaded guilty to unlawfully observing and recording eight young women and unlawfully publishing intimate images of nine women, and was sentenced to 15 months in custody followed by two years of probation.

Red Barn at Mattick’s Ltd. was ordered to pay $750,000 within 14 days, including $85,000 each for five women whose intimate images were distributed online, $25,000 for a woman whose images were not distributed, and a further $15,000 to both Burke and Colter as the representative plaintiffs.

The rest goes to legal fees.

» The Canadian Press