Parminder Sidhu, who owned a Brampton trucking company called Prime 9, was sentenced in a Buffalo court this week. He was the last of six men convicted in the international drug smuggling conspiracy to be sentenced. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy C. Lynch said in a release that between 2009 and 2011, Sidhu, Michael Bagri, Ravinder Arora, Alvin Randhawa, Gursharan Singh and Harinder Dhaliwal conspired to 

smuggle cocaine across the border in transport trucks.

BRAMPTON – An Indo-Canadian man from Brampton has been sentenced to 15 years in an American prison for hiring truck drivers to smuggle $120-million worth of cocaine into Canada from the United States.

Parminder Sidhu, 43, who owned a Brampton trucking company called Prime 9, was sentenced in a Buffalo court this week. He was the last of six men convicted in the international drug smuggling conspiracy to be sentenced.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy C. Lynch said in a release that between 2009 and 2011, Sidhu, Michael Bagri, Ravinder Arora, Alvin Randhawa, Gursharan Singh and Harinder Dhaliwal conspired to smuggle cocaine across the border in transport trucks.

A search of Sidhu’s Brampton home following his 2011 arrest in the U.S. turned up drug ledgers that provided details of nine smuggling trips in 2009 and 2010, according to U.S. officials. The trips involved 1,617 kilograms of cocaine brought into Canada from the U.S.

Court heard that Sidhu hired Bagri in 2010 to travel to California and pick up 97 kilograms of cocaine, which was then hidden in a false compartment in the floor of a tractor trailer, said a news release. Arora took the truck from Bagri in Cheektowaga, New York, and was caught trying to cross the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge.

U.S. officials said Sidhu directed Bagri to go to California again in 2011 and hide another 26 kilograms of cocaine in another tractor trailer, which was driven to Pembroke, New York and another truck driver took over from him. Police stopped the truck and Sidhu’s vehicle and seized the cocaine.