A truck driver trying to get into Canada was stopped with about $3 million worth of suspected cocaine at the Ambassador Bridge, according to federal officials.
Gurshinder Singh was charged with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance in a criminal complaint May 9 in U.S. District Court in Detroit. He made an initial appearance and was temporarily detained. A detention hearing was set for May 12, according to court records.
His attorney, Celeste Kinney, had no comment.
Singh tried to exit the U.S. to Canada via the bridge early May 9 and was found with just over 173 kilograms of suspected cocaine in his tractor-trailer truck, according to an affidavit.
The cocaine, about 380 pounds, was discovered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Detroit Contraband Enforcement Team as it was conducting outbound enforcement operations at the bridge at 6:15 a.m. It made contact with Singh, who was hauling an Ontario tractor and trailer, about 40 minutes later, according to the affidavit.
It indicates Singh said he was coming from Wisconsin, saying he stayed in Indiana for the night. Once he parked, he was instructed to get out of the truck by customs and border protection officers.
They opened the passenger-side toolbox compartment of the trailer, according to the affidavit, and found Home Depot moving boxes hidden behind rubber mats. It indicated officers opened a box and found vacuum-sealed, duct-tape brick bundles consistent with narcotics packaging.
Singh was put into handcuffs, and he asked: “What’s going on? Am I under arrest? Was there something in the Home Depot boxes?” as he was taken to a transport vehicle, according to the court filing.
Eight Home Depot boxes were removed from the trailer passenger-side tool compartment and the individual bundles were weighed. Narcotics testing was done on three of the individually wrapped bundles from three separate boxes, with the three bundles returning positive results for cocaine, according to the affidavit.
An examination of Singh’s phone showed he was in contact with a number through Signal, a messaging service designed to keep conversations secure, with communication starting early May 6 and continued with three calls and a message that was received stating: ‘Bro next load mera Friday deliver ho rea,'” according to the affidavit. The next message received, it indicated, stated “so may be we caneet Thursday evening or night.”
On May 8, the unknown number sent the location of a truck stop in Indiana to Singh. A Department of Homeland Security special agent wrote that he believed this conversation was to coordinate a meeting between Singh and the unknown individual.
The special agent wrote “the volume of controlled substances and the manner in which they were being transported from the United States to Canada is indicative of a broader drug trafficking effort that is involved in the further distribution of the controlled substances.”
“Because of the extremely high value of the drug shipment, every individual involved in the transportation of cocaine are known and trusted by the organization and reimbursed monetarily by the organization,” he wrote.
This is believed to be the fourth suspected bulk cocaine load intercepted by customs and border protection near the bridge since March 21.
The last one was April 20 when 193 pounds was seized from a Canada-bound truck, where several bricks of a cocaine were concealed in two duffle bags in the trailer, according to an April 28 release from the agency.
In February, a Canadian truck driver was charged with suspected cocaine weighing more than 240 pounds in his semitruck as he tried to return to Canada from Detroit. Federal officials said the street value of that suspected cocaine was estimated to be more than $1.7 million. His case is pending trial, according to court records.
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @challreporter.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Feds: About $3M in suspected cocaine found in truck at Ambassador Bridge
Reporting by Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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