BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Apr. 25, 2019– A US Department of Justice (DOJ) press release on Tuesday, April 23, provided details of an Indian national who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his role in a massive transnational human smuggling ring which was responsible for trafficking about 400 persons into the United States, one of whom died attempting to enter the US.

Yadvinder Singh Sandhu, 61, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and 15 counts of smuggling aliens to the United States for profit before U.S. Magistrate Judge Silvia Carreño-Coll of the District of Puerto Rico. He was on three years of supervised release, before he was sentenced, the DOJ said.

District Judge Carmen C. Cerezo accepted the guilty plea and sentenced the defendant. Sandhu was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the District of Puerto Rico on March 15, 2017, said the US DOJ press release. Sandhu also went by the names “Yadvinder Singh Bhamba,” “Bhupinder Kumar,” “Rajinder Singh,” “Robert Howard Scott” and “Atkins Lawson Howard.”

“Sandhu and other members of the conspiracy made flight arrangements for aliens to travel from India through other countries – including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Iran, Panama, Venezuela, Belize and Haiti – to the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic was used as a staging area, where aliens were housed before being transported to the United States,” the DOJ release said.

The US said that the aliens from India paid between $30,000 and $85,000 to be smuggled from India to the US and that smuggling was Sandhu’s primary source of income, between 2013 and 2015 when the smuggling ring was operating.