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More than a dozen men in Peel Region have been arrested for extorting local businesses, but Punjabi community leaders in Brampton worry that the threats are not going to stop.

Avi Dhaliwal is an entrepreneur who has lived in the city, a large suburb north of Toronto with a sizable Punjabi population, for 35 years. He said extortion threats have been occurring since late 2022.

“People don’t even want to go to sit \[at\] Tim Hortons or Starbucks. They are always looking around,” Mr. Dhaliwal said. He believes the threats target the Punjabi community alone, forcing some to move residences without updating their address.

“I don’t see anything getting resolved ... because people are still under threat.”

In late May, Peel Regional Police announced the arrest of 17 suspects after an investigation into extortion that targeted South Asian business owners and community members across Canada and the U.S.

[Toronto-area extortion bust arrests foreigners who came on temporary visas](https://archive.ph/o/U7K75/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-toronto-area-extortion-bust-arrests-foreigners-who-came-on-temporary/)

The accused allegedly used intimidation, threats and escalated violence to extort local businesses. Police have laid more than 100 charges, including 75 firearm offences, 11 extortion-related charges and two arson charges.

The majority of the alleged extortionists have ties to an international criminal network known as For Brothers, police said. Peel Regional Police first identified the group in 2025, which prompted the investigation that led to the May arrests, Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich told The Globe and Mail in a phone interview.

This is potentially the first investigation that has been connected to the group, he said.

Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, said extortion is a problem specifically affecting the Punjabi community.

“When we describe this as a South Asian problem, it often erases important details,” he said.

Binder Singh, a community leader in Brampton, knows victims of extortion and told The Globe that many in the Punjabi community remain fearful that these incidents will continue.

He said some victims are fleeing Canada out of concerns for their safety. “It’s the broken dream right now. We came to Canada for safety, security and prosperity,” he said.

He believes immigration policy carries part of the blame for the extortion attempts seen in the community.

Jeffrey MacDonald, a communications advisor with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, said in an e-mailed statement that the IRCC works with national and international partners “to carry out comprehensive security screening to help mitigate potential security and criminality risks with those seeking to enter Canada.”

Karine Martel, a spokesperson for Canada Border Services Agency, wrote in an emailed statement that the agency “continues to investigate individuals alleged to be engaged in extortion and extortion-related activities, and will take appropriate enforcement action as the investigations conclude.”

Mr. Milinovich from Peel Police said community members have expressed their worries to police about threats allegedly coming from the Lawrence Bishnoi Gang and concerns linking this to foreign interference, but police do not have any evidence to support those accusations.

“I think it would be naive, almost negligent, to ignore those concerns,” he said.

At the time of the arrests, police said the accused have no ties to the Lawrence Bishnoi Gang, the notorious India-based gang that has been linked to other extortion cases and was deemed a terrorist group in 2025 by federal officials.

The link between the For Brothers group and the Lawrence Bishnoi Gang is still under investigation, Mr. Milinovich said.

“In this particular investigation, a number of times when the threats were delivered \[the accused\] made references to being associated to or members of the Lawrence Bishnoi Gang. We have not clearly been able to draw that correlation,” he said.

Mr. Milinovich said it is possible that the accused were invoking the Lawrence Bishnoi Gang as a way to terrorize the Punjabi community.

“Our community is very familiar with that particular name. It carries some anxiety. It carries fear,” he said.

Despite major extortion bust, Brampton’s Punjabi community remains worried for its safety