Undercover DEA Operation Takes Down Canadian Brothers Keeper Gang Leader Linked to Sinaloa & Kinahan Cartels

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

DEA announced it has largely dismantled a Canada based international drug cartel and arrested a notorious Indo-Canadian gangster, Opinder Singh Sian, better known as "Thanos," for running a global fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking ring from British Columbia, Canada.

Sian was arrested in Arizona on June 27 after his role in smuggling methamphetamine to Australia and chemicals for fentanyl production into the US via Canada. Much of the case focuses on methamphetamine shipments from Los Angeles to Australia, orchestrated by Sian, who acted as a proxy for transnational Mexican, Chinese, and Iranian networks, experts say.

The investigation which began in 2022, has revealed that Sian had operational ties with chemical suppliers linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

Who is Thanos?

In his early days, Sian was wounded in a shooting in 2008 that left his friend Gurpreet Sidhu dead and survived another shooting attempt on his life in May 2011. At that time he was believed to be connected to the Red Scorpions gang and Indo-Canadian gang Independent Soldiers as part of the Wolfpack Alliance with Hells Angels members. 

In 2007, he had a conviction for use of a firearm and obstructing a peace officer. He had often been stopped by police from 2007 to 2010 in vehicles with other IS gangsters. 

In March 2009, police executed a search warrant at the family home in Surrey and found cash and drugs but no charges resulted.

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In 2016, Gavinder Singh Grewal and several key Red Scorpions gang members split off and started the Brothers Keepers gang. A year later, Singh Grewal was found shot dead in his apartment in retaliation for the killings of several RS members had a falling out with Independent Soldiers leaders.

Brothers Keepers gang members.

Singh is currently a known senior member of the notorious Brothers Keepers gang based in Canada, consisting mostly of members from the Punjab region of India. The gang is also believed to be supported by the Pakistani Intelligence Service ISI.

The gang has lent its support to the cause of Khalistan separatist movement on many occasions, was also seen active in rallies in support of Air India bombing mastermind Talwinder Singh Parmar and others, sources reported to the India Times. To Indian authorities, the Khalistani are terrorists, complicating the line between drug trafficking criminal groups and traditional terrorist groups.  

“Local gangs like Brothers Keepers aren’t just street crews, they’re frontline proxies in transnational narcoterror networks,” former Canadian intelligence analyst Scott McGregor, an expert on the nexus of Chinese and Iranian threats and foreign interference, commented on X. “Ignoring them as low-level threats misses their role in laundering, logistics, and hybrid warfare.”

According to Canadian police, the group deals in bulk trafficking of cocaine, MDMA, heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamine besides arms trafficking, murder, extortion and armed robbery. Sian made four drops of 500 pounds of methamphetamine in Southern California before the DEA moved for his arrest in Arizona last month. The shipments were destined for Australia and New Zealand, a profitable market for meth.

The DEA had mounted an undercover operation to arrest Sian after his ties were made known following a tip from a Turkish intelligence agency to the local DEA attache in 2022. Court documents regarding his detention claim he is alleged to have been involved in a large-scale drug operation involving approximately 520 pounds of fentanyl. He is alleged to be a member of a criminal gang and is alleged to have ties to international hitmen. He has no legal status to be in the United States and has connections to several nations outside of the US and Canada.

Undercover DEA Operation

The case is detailed in a sprawling DEA probe spanning Turkey, Mexico City, Dubai, Australia, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, all captured in a 29-page affidavit with scenes so surreal they could rival a Hollywood script, complete with underworld nicknames like “Burger,” “Queen,” and “Darth Vader.”

The investigation began in June 2022 when DEA agents in Ankara, Turkey, received intelligence about an opportunity to embed a confidential source into a global trafficking organization. This network needed help moving large shipments of methamphetamine and cocaine from Southern California to Australia, one of the world’s most lucrative drug markets.

DEA agents provided their Ankara counterparts with the phone number of CS-1 known in global gang networks as “Queen” who posed as an international logistics coordinator. A Turkish narco, Ibrahim Ozcelik, made initial contact and then passed CS-1’s details to a North American leader: Opinder Singh Sian.

Sian had arranged for a meeting between a confidential US undercover source, known as "Queen," and a Chinese man named Peter Peng Zhou in Vancouver in 2023. Zhou ran a trucking company with an Indo-Canadian associate, revealed that he could "receive fentanyl precursor chemicals from China into Vancouver and "send 100 kilos of chemicals per month to Los Angeles" using his trucking company.

Sian and "Queen," the DEA said, held multiple meetings and were in contact through chat application Threema to coordinate multiple deliveries. Sian first dined at a downtown restaurant with his wife, child, and the undercover operative before taking “Queen” to meet his precursor suppliers at a coffee house.

Zhou allegedly told "Queen" that he had been doing this for about 10 years and remembered when these kilograms of chemicals were upwards of $300,000 each. He claimed he knew how to make fentanyl and methamphetamine from the chemicals and emphasized that he would require upfront payment before sending any shipments south to Los Angeles.

That critical meeting, involving Sian, Zhou, and other associates, provided prosecutors with some of the clearest evidence yet of a direct chemical pipeline from Chinese suppliers into North American distribution networks, routed first through Vancouver’s port and trucking infrastructure.

The undercover informant then travelled to Vancouver with Sian meeting two men who explained they had about 500 kilograms of cocaine stockpiled and needed help moving it through Los Angeles ports and on to Australia.

"Queen" or CS-1 claimed they could facilitate offloading in Los Angeles, repackaging, and onward shipping via container vessel to Australia where each kilo of cocaine could fetch up to $200,000.

In March 2023, Sian and CS-1 met again at a restaurant in Manhattan Beach, California, to discuss expanding into methamphetamine smuggling. “Queen” also brought along a DEA undercover agent, posing as a cousin who worked at the Port of Long Beach and helped move narcotics undetected.

Sian pressed for details about the port, probed UC-1’s connections, and mentioned knowing other contacts at the port, the DEA alleges.

On July 6, 2023, after days of negotiation, Jorge Orozco-Santana arranged a pick-up in Anaheim using a white Mercedes. He verified the deal with the serial number of a dollar bill token, handed over two plastic bins containing 84.6 kilograms of methamphetamine. The DEA tied this deal to the Montreal network involved in Sian’s encrypted chats.

However instead of smuggling the drugs, the DEA put in place an elaborate sting operation where agents created a staged shipment of methamphetamine through a safehouse­ in Pomona, California.

The DEA intercepted the drugs shipment arranged by Sian and substituted them with a decoy batch which was then sent onto Australia. Using a GPS-tracked, Australian police were able to follow the container when it arrived to a suspected stash house in Sydney.

On July 29, 2023, Sian created a new Threema group chat including a new associate using the moniker “AAA,” later identified as Tien Vai Ty Truong — a dual citizen of Vietnam and Canada, with narco operations in Toronto and Vancouver directed from Hong Kong, according to the DEA affidavit.

The group discussed the 30-pound and 200-pound loads and planned their shipment to Australia. On August 1, Sian asked CS-1 to call an associate named Kular to manage mounting anxiety among Mexican sources over shipment delays.

Meanwhile, CS-1 began discussing fentanyl precursor chemicals with Kular and Sian.

This line of discussion began because Kular had first asked CS-1 whether her networks could receive direct ketamine shipments into Mexico City — a question that suggested to the DEA that Sian’s network likely had direct access to Chinese Communist Party–linked drug suppliers and large-scale chemical manufacturing channels.

Kinahan Cartel, believed to still be in Dubai.

The DEA agents were subsequently able to identify multiple characters involved in the network, which ranged from Turkey to Dubai. Sian was also found linked to the notorious Kinahan crime family which is linked to Hezbollah and other groups.

In 2023, during a meeting, Sian claimed to work closely with Irish organized crime, pecifically the Kinahan family, as well as Italian groups and other powerful Canadian gangs. Outside Canada, he described sourcing drugs directly from major Mexican and South American cartels, reinforcing his role as a cross-border broker capable of linking multiple criminal networks. He also said he collaborated with Hakan Arif, a key member of the Aussie Cartel.

Sources Times of India, The Bureau

Categories: australia, Canada, dea, kinahan