Alleged fraud ring linked to Air India suspects

Edmonton: An Indo-Canadian organization from B.C. with links to Air India bombing suspects allegedly used documents stolen from a private Edmonton registry to underpin a multimillion-dollar auto theft fraud.
Civil court documents filed in Vancouver in support of a lawsuit by Insurance Corp. of B.C. allege an organization that includes an admitted drug dealer obtained vehicle registration documents from an Alberta registry. The court documents don't name the registry or the source of the documents. But law enforcement officials in both provinces say an Edmonton criminal well-known to police engineered the breach at an Edmonton registry. The man's girlfriend worked there and stole the documents for him.
Police sources said that when the couple was arrested in 2003, she had dozens of internal registry documents in her purse. She was fired from the registry but never charged.
"She stole the paper -- identities, blank cards, the whole bit," a police official said.
About 50 vehicles stolen from Kelowna were registered using "easily obtainable stolen registrations" from the Edmonton registry, the official said.
One person named in the suit is Raminder Singh (Mindy) Bhandher, one of the witnesses for the defence in the Air India case. His father, Balwant, was an Air India suspect.
During his 2004 testimony, Mindy Bhandher boasted about his history in Indo-Canadian gang activity, admitted he smuggled marijuana, sold cocaine and ecstasy and carried a handgun. He admitted he had been involved in a credit-card fraud ring in B.C. and Calgary.
23/02/08 Charles Rusnell/Canwest News Service/Times Colonist, Canada

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Categories: Air India - International Feb 2008, Foreign Feb 2008, NACIL Feb 2008, Safety Feb 2008