ED Detains Member of International Drug Cartel Associated with Multimillion-Dollar Scheme

New Delhi: An international drug cartel member has been taken into custody by the Enforcement Directorate. The ED conducted searches in Haldwani on Friday. Parvinder Singh has been taken into custody on suspicion of belonging to a narcotics gang.

ED will request custody of him and he will appear before a special court today.

According to ED sources, Parvinder Singh ran the Singh Organization, an international drug trafficking organization that sold drugs through a network of distributors and distribution cells for drugs, vendor marketing websites on the dark web, and numerous free advertisements on websites that sell drugs and controlled substances. The Singh Organization was compensated for narcotics trafficking revenues, including bitcoin, which were laundered via cryptocurrency wallets.

Singh has links to Banmeet Singh, whom US officials deported from London in March 2023. On January 26, 2024, he entered a guilty plea to many counts of narcotics smuggling.

Singh lost his $150 million worth of assets and was given a five-year jail term by a US court on April 19.

Authorities in the UK detained him in London in 2019. In January 2024, he was extradited to the US.
The US Department of Justice released the following statement on April 19:

“Banmeet Singh, 40, of Haldwani, India, allegedly established vendor marketing websites on dark web marketplaces like Silk Road, Alpha Bay, Hansa, and others in order to sell controlled substances like fentanyl, LSD, ecstasy, Xanax, ketamine, and tramadol, according to court documents and statements made in court. Customers used the vendor sites to purchase medications from Singh and pay with bitcoin. Subsequently, Singh organized or personally delivered the medications from Europe to the US via US mail or other delivery methods.”

Singh commanded at least eight distribution cells throughout the United States between at least mid-2012 and July 2017, including cells in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, New York, North Dakota, and Washington, among other places. These distribution cells received drug supplies, which they subsequently repackaged and reshipped to sites in the United States, the Virgin Islands, Canada, England, Ireland, Jamaica, and all 50 states.

During the course of the conspiracy, the Singh drug organization established a multimillion dollar drug enterprise that laundered millions of dollars of drug proceeds into cryptocurrency accounts, which eventually gained approximately $150 million in value. They also moved hundreds of kilograms of controlled substances throughout the United States.

At the request of the United States, Singh was detained in London in August 2019 and extradited back to the US in March 2023. On January 26, he entered a guilty plea to the counts of conspiring to launder money and possessing with the purpose of distributing prohibited drugs.