Corrupt Toronto Police Scandal, Shootings & Local Gang War Linked to Ryan Wedding Case

“Socalj” for Borderland Beat

New court documents detail a link between allegations of corruption inside the Toronto Police Service and the cross-continent drug network of ex-Olympic snowboarder Ryan James Wedding.

Project South Investigation

Police in the Toronto suburbs launched an investigation after uncovering a plot to assassinate an Ontario corrections employee. The employee had become a target “because he was doing his job,” according to police.

Video footage captured during the investigation shows that suspects visited the official’s residence on more than one occasion. On the evening of June 20, 2025, while several police officers were on patrol in the area, three suspects in a vehicle rammed a patrol car parked in the driveway of the residence. The occupants of the vehicle, an adult and two minors, were arrested in possession of a handgun.

The investigation, dubbed Project South, subsequently determined that a Toronto police officer had obtained confidential information and provided it to the criminals to help them prepare their plan to kill the corrections officer.

Toronto police said over a 36-hour period, several suspects went to the official’s home in York Region, at least three times, “allegedly for the purpose of murdering him.” Video surveillance shows masked and armed suspects went to the home, and at one point, rammed a police cruiser that was in the driveway as police closed in.

Police concluded the incident had been targeting a jail worker at the Toronto South Detention Centre.
According to the documents, the guard told police he was unpopular with “most inmates” at the jail where he worked. He listed several people he thought could have a reason to harm him, including a man named Gurpreet Singh, who was being held at the facility awaiting extradition to the United States.

Singh was an inmate inside the Toronto South Detention Centre last June, when the three masked gunmen stormed the home of the jail official in an apparent contracted hit.

 
In the days following the botched assassination attempt, the newly released documents show how investigators homed in on Singh as an inmate with a potential motive.

They allege in the documents that Singh “may have directed” the hit on the jail official, using connections both inside and outside of the jail. (The official cannot be identified due to a publication ban).

Singh has not been charged in relation to the attempted murder. 

Police Corporal Nishwant Dosanjh

In the newly released document, investigators allege that Nishwant Dosanjh, a corporal at the Toronto South, and, according to police, Singh’s former romantic partner had photographed the license plate of the jail official targeted in the attempted murder.

The ITO says she then provided that photo to Singh, and the photo was then disseminated through Singh’s “associates,” and ultimately to veteran Toronto Const. Timothy Barnhardt. The documents allege Barnhardt then illegally searched the licence plate to obtain the jail official’s address, which was then circulated within an alleged criminal network.

Constable Barnhardt was arrested in February and remains in custody.

Dosanjh has been the subject of search warrants and wiretaps, but, like Singh, has not been charged in relation to the attempted murder.

Her lawyer, Kim Schofield, said in a statement that Dosanjh “denies any allegations of criminal or professional misconduct and adamantly maintains her complete innocence.”

Schofield said Dosanjh was identified as a “person of interest” by investigators and she has “co-operated fully” with police, including by giving them “unfettered” access to her seized phone.

“Ms. Dosanjh has not been charged criminally, and there is no indication criminal charges will ever be laid.”

Who is Gurpreet Singh?

US officials told the court that Gurpreet Singh has “extensive organized crime connections within Dubai, including relationships with members of the Kinahan gang, which is a well-known, violent organized crime group operating throughout the world.”

Singh is a former truck driver turned gangster. But in the witness box, while being questioned by his defense attorney, he said he’s made no income since his dump truck business went bankrupt in 2021.

Asked by federal Crown counsel Kiran Gill about several lengthy stints abroad including weeks or months at a time spent in the United Arab Emirates, Colombia and Mexico, Singh described them as business trips for his girlfriend, with all expenses covered by her.

“She was looking for more locations” for the Toronto brunch restaurant she owns, Singh testified.

Singh is also accused to have been involved in a scheme to ship stolen high-end cars to Dubai through the port of Montreal. Singh was recorded discussing the arrangement at a meeting last year by the slain key FBI informant Jonathan Acebedo Garcia at an auto body shop in Ontario.

The same FBI informant flew to meet with Singh in the United Arab Emirates. His attorneys were looking to have the drug trafficking charges in Canada dismissed due to the death of the key US witness.

Sinaloa Drug Debt

Singh and a friend travelled to Culiacan, Sinaloa on July 29, 2024 to meet with a cartel leader to resolve a debt. On August 2, Singh “reported that they had been kidnapped and tied up and had been given until the end of the day to pay the $600,000 drug debt,” according to US prosecutors.

In encrypted communications, Wedding said he would negotiate the release of Singh, who confirmed by August 7 that he had been freed.  

Wedding took credit for negotiating Singh’s release. Singh’s wife collected roughly $400,000 toward a ransom payment to the Sinaloa Cartel, and obtained Wedding’s assistance.

Inside Toronto South Jail

Police obtained a wiretap on Singh’s jailhouse communications soon after he was identified by the targeted official as one of three inmates who had “known hostility” toward him because of “disciplinary or enforcement actions” within the jail.

 
The official was known for his strict enforcement against contraband in the jail, particularly drugs.
In the ITO, police alleged that Dosanjh arranged her schedule to ensure she worked on Singh’s range as much as possible, spending “extraordinarily long periods” in his company, “often in private.”

“Singh appears to exercise a degree of influence if not power over Dosanjh, which is anomalous given their roles.”

The Ministry of the Solicitor General, which oversees Ontario’s jails, declined to answer all of the Star’s questions for this story.

Police also alleged that Singh’s current “intimate partner,” restaurateur Joanne Kopty, acted as an “external facilitator,” including by relaying messages for Singh while he was behind bars. Kopty, like both Singh and Dosanjh, has not been charged. 

“If police had grounds to charge her based on the results of their investigation, they would have,” said Sid Freeman, Kopty’s lawyer, in a statement to the Star.

Investigators also tapped Dosanjh’s phone and installed a recording device in her vehicle.

Dosanjh “expressed animosity” toward the jail official because she believed he was targeting her for “suspected corruption,” investigators alleged in the ITO.

In her statement to the Star, Schofield, Dosanjh’s lawyer, said Dosanjh has been on paid leave since February, “while an investigation is conducted into allegations made by Ms. Dosanjh against another staff member.”

Teen Guns for Hire

The ITO also outlines new allegations against Timothy Barnhardt, the officer whose alleged corruption is at the centre of the Project South case.

 
Barnhardt is facing charges that he routinely ran searches of secure police databases to sell personal information to organized criminals. 

The ITO includes a new allegation that Barnhardt’s searches ended up in the hands of a network of young guns-for-hire. That allegation, one of the few new claims against Barnhardt that are not under publication ban, offers a link between the Project South case and what has become a worrying trend in Toronto-area crime.

Among those listed in the ITO as a part of the alleged conspiracy to shoot the jail official is Keajean Doman, who is facing more than two dozen charges.

The ITO also alleges that Doman carried out another shooting at a home in Vaughan in September three days after Barnhardt pulled the address from police databases.

 
After the Vaughan shooting, Doman was subsequently charged with six other shootings.

The ITO describes Doman communicating with others about, among other things “assembling a team for a job and firearms.” However, the vast majority of those text exchanges remain under publication ban.

 
At Friday’s court hearing, the Crown said the case is about organized crime groups who order gun violence, the people they recruit to carry it out, and the “corrupt sources” they go to for information.

“We will defend these allegations in a courtroom where facts, not headlines, decide the outcome,” one of Barnhardt’s lawyers, Jason Dos Santos, told the Star in an email.

Young hitman Malik Cunningham, the Toronto man accused of murdering Randy Fader on behalf of the network linked to Wedding was also discussed in the ITO.

The now 25-year-old Cunningham was identified by York police as a member of the “Falstaff Crew,” a group based in Toronto’s Jane-Falstaff neighbourhood locked in a long-standing, violent feud with a rival gang from the Lawrence Heights area, known as the Go Getem Gang (GGG).

And, the documents say, Cunningham may have been stopped in the middle of plotting another violent crime against his rivals. He was arrested after authorities spotted the Ford Explorer used as a secondary getaway car in Fader’s killing at the funeral of recently killed Toronto GGG gang member.

But he would soon be free again with the help of prominent Ontario lawyer Deepak Paradkar, who himself is now facing charges over the assassination of a key witness in the Wedding case.

The York officers had no idea Cunningham allegedly killed Fader just two weeks earlier; Niagara investigators, meanwhile, were closing in on that same vehicle.

According to the filings, York police discovered Cunningham with $150,000 in cash, seven rounds of 9mm, binoculars, gloves, walkie-talkies and four cell phones.

Cunningham’s white iPhone contained a trove of evidence allegedly linking him to Fader’s murder and Wedding’s second-in-command, turned confidential witness, Andrew Clark.

Training in Mexico

According to the email/travel and GPS records taken from the iPhone, Cunningham flew from Toronto to Mexico for five days in March 2024 to complete a $100,000 course, which included training in “small arms long guns,” “medic” and “snipers.”

“I am what you call now ELITE thanks to you brother,” Cunningham allegedly wrote Clark from Mexico.

According to the US Treasury, former Italian special forces member Gianluca Tiepolo was sanctioned as one of the network’s chief money launderers. Tiepolo allegedly held millions of dollars’ worth of Wedding’s property under his own name, while operating luxury car and motorcycle businesses out of Italy and England.

Canadian jeweler Roman Sokolovski made millions of dollars’ worth of monthly vehicle payments to Tiepolo on behalf of Wedding, according to documents filed in an Ontario court.

Tiepolo founded Windrose Tactical Academy/Solutions, which provided “military-style tactical training” for Wedding’s hitmen, the U.S. Treasury said in a statement last month.
Based on social media posts by Tiepolo and Windrose Tactical, prior to the US sanctions, the company has been involved in training sessions in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Italy, Dubai, and other regions. Various posts promote training for law enforcement and other professionals, most recently, the company was training with INTERPOL and Colombian National Police in Colombia.

Neither prosecutors nor authorities have shared an explicit motive in Fader’s killing, but court records suggest it may have been related to a drug debt.

In police statements after the murder, family members and associates described Fader as a private person who kept work and personal life separate.

According to the ITO, his father told police Fader used to broker marijuana internationally — storing it in furniture and microwaves — and that he met “Mexican cartel people,” though he wasn’t sure if that was for business or social reasons.

Fader’s mother, meanwhile, told police her son had travelled to Dubai and Spain for the “drug and oil” trade, according to the documents.

In multiple interviews, police heard Fader allegedly owed $100,000 to a group identified in records only as “the Russians.”

According to the ITO, Cunningham didn’t act alone. Investigators said they determined the homicide involved at least three vehicles.

Court records show Cunningham pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the funeral stop remarkably swiftly, a little over a month after his arrest.

That plea that came soon after Cunningham secured the services of a new lawyer Paradkar.

On May 28, 2024, Ontario Court of Justice Mary Misener presided over Cunningham’s sentencing, aware only of the circumstances surrounding the funeral stop, not the Fader murder.

After Paradkar pleaded with the judge, citing his young age, desire to finish high school and help out his aunt. It was convincing enough that the Judge gave Cunningham only 90 days. He was released in September. By mid-October 2024, he was charged by the FBI with Fader’s murder and is now back behind bars.

Sources Toronto Star, Global News, Borderland Beat