A joint operation involving Edmonton police has led to the deportation of two men, over what police say is a wave of extortions targeting the city’s South Asian community. 

Edmonton Police Service along with officials from the Lower Mainland District RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) provided new details Thursday during a news conference.

CBSA said it deported a 22-year-old man who was allegedly the ringleader in carrying out extortions in the Edmonton area.

A 25-year-old man was also removed from Canada and three others are being investigated. 

Police wouldn’t confirm the men’s identities. They also wouldn’t say where the men had been deported to.

Officials said some of the suspects are connected to extortions in Calgary, the B.C. Lower Mainland and Ontario.

Another 51 suspects are linked to what police say is a criminal network believed to be responsible for orchestrating the alleged extortions in Edmonton.

Joint forces operation

EPS, together with the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT), RCMP and CBSA, have created a joint forces operation to investigate a string of reported extortion attempts.

EPS Supt. Robinder Gill, with the Criminal Investigations Division of EPS, said this latest investigation comes after an uptick in extortion cases after the EPS investigation Project Gaslight ended in 2024.

“In the spring of 2025 we saw a cluster of these extortion events now re-emerge,” Gill said. 

“We know that this crime type is evolving here in Canada. We also know that these organized crime groups are highly adaptable, and they are constantly evolving in their tactics.” 

Gill said the structure of these groups is a tiered, predatory network of organized crime where “the risk is local, the revenue is global, and the fallout is the erosion of the very trust that holds the Southeast Asian community together.”

Kristine Conroy, an enforcement manager with the CBSA, said the federal agency started 372 extortion related immigration investigations and 51 of those are directly tied to the investigation in Edmonton.

“The success of this co-ordinated operation in Edmonton is a testament to the dedication of the CBSA, the Edmonton Police Service alert, and the RCMP, to stopping this evolving threat of extortion within our communities nationwide,” Conroy said.

As of March 12, the CBSA has issued 70 removal orders, and of those, 35 people have already been removed from Canada, Conroy said.

Chief Supt. Duncan Pound, a commander with Lower Mainland District RCMP, said Thursday the national and international nature of the crimes has required collaboration across police forces and levels of governments. 

“We need to work in co-operation, because we understand that the criminal organizations that are responsible for these extortions travel across this country and seek to escape punishment by moving to different jurisdictions,” Pound said. 

“Our collective efforts have established connections between firearms, vehicles, suspects, businesses that span across this country and they are not respecting borders, and that’s why the approach must and does, as my partners have alluded to today, ensure that we are working together and sharing information on a daily, if not hourly basis to ensure that we understand exactly what’s happening in this evolving threat.”