A recent series of alleged extortions has some business owners and workers in the central neighborhoods of Winnipeg who fear for their safety, saying that they are being threatened with caused fires and violence if they do not deliver money.
Some believe it is a group leading a criminal scheme, and they are frustrating because those responsible have not been arrested.
Jay Delaney’s family has security images of a robbery at the Thai restaurant in Thida, which they have, in Donald Street on Broadway in the early hours of July 4. In the images, a masked man crosses the glass with a hammer and tries to light a fire on a table, while a second person in a dark sweatshirt is outside.
Moments later, the man briefly lowers his mask revealing a mustache under a pair of sunglasses, and throws a Molotov cocktail inside the restaurant. Thida survives greatly unharmed, apart from broken windows.
Two weeks later, at approximately at the same time, at 4:30 am on July 18, the other family business in the neighborhood of Sargent Park, Mae Sunee Thai Cuisine, was also set on fire.
This time, they were not so lucky. The restaurant was very damaged by the fire and water of the fire fighting response that will be closed for about a year, Delaney said Monday.
“It really stinks for us. We lost our business, but knowing how it feels, if we can prevent them from doing the next, at least someone else does not have to go through that,” he said.
Around the moment of these fires, other companies at the northern end of the city reported having been threatened with caused fires and violence if they did not pay, such as the Winnipeg Free Press First informed.
Delaney connected with about 10 stores through a group chat, and after talking to them and reviewing video surveillance, he said he believes that the cases are linked.
“What movement are going to do next?” said.
Delaney says that his family has received threats on social networks from the fire in Thida’s and has fled the city.
“They have just reached the point where they are only scared.”
Fire caused, threats
A couple of days before the fire in Mae Sunee, the stores in the northern end were visited by a group of four men. CBC has obtained and reviewed multi -incident security images in the last month.
On July 16, the group appeared in a convenience store in Main Street, where they gave an employee a note with a telephone number for the owner to call it.
“Be sure to receive a call,” you can listen to a man to tell the employee. He continues to say that if they do not receive an answer in a day, they will return and could burn the place.
Later that afternoon, a group visits a different convenience store. An employee can be heard by raising his voice behind the counter, saying that he is calling the police and is being threatened.
At the beginning of July 18, a group was captured in video surveillance behind the store, starting a fire. Based on their footwear, business owners believe that at least one of the people was among the original group that threatened the worker two days before.
The owner of the nearby Selkirk Quickie Mart told CBC, at least two of the same men arrived in his store in a car in the early hours of July 23, then tried to enter and lend her to flame. That was followed by a threat that they would burn the place again, said Ahmed Muhammad last week.
He says he has been receiving calls and text messages for weeks, demanding money, up to $ 500,000. Muhammad says that threats began after people repeatedly came to their store asking for and obtained their phone number.
“He went from small threats to burn my business, saying that they will kill my family if I go to the police,” he said.
Muhammad says that the family fears for their safety and has also left the city.
“It’s a terrifying moment. I will not return until they are arrested,” he said.
The list
Selkirk Quickie Mart, along with other locations, appears on a handwritten list of which CBC obtained a copy.
The original list was delivered to one of the companies affected by two people who claimed to have been hired as drivers by a group of Montreal behind the Arsons, but the drivers were not paid.
The family restaurants of DeLaney are not on the list, but said it believes that the cases are connected. In May, he listened for the first time to Mae Sunee’s staff about strangers who asked the owner, who were later involved in a shock where they called the police.
Extortion They have dramatically increased in Winnipeg since 2020, a year in which 26 incidents were recorded, according to data from Statistics Canada. In 2023, that number jumped to 198, and in 2024, it increased even more to 235.
Tuesday, Edmonton police He warned the extortions community of southern Asia in that city, and in June, Montreal Police He arrested 13 people accused of extorting the owners of restaurants for money.
Delaney has heard of extortions in other Canadian cities, but never in Winnipeg. He feels frustrated for what he sees as a lack of police progress in this city.
“Everything has captured, that’s why I’m really in shock, why have the police not yet made arrests?” said.
“It has a plaque. It has its full face in video after video, and audio after audio in several different stores and yet, as far as we know about the news, it did not make any arrest.”
In a statement sent by email, the Winnipeg police say they are investigating multiple arsons and robberies, but they cannot “talk to any connection between the incidents”, because the investigations are ongoing.
They urge any company and people who are threatened to present themselves to the police.
Some business owners and workers in Winnipeg fear for their safety after receiving threats to their businesses and families, and as a result they have left the city. The owner of a convenience store says that he has received fire and violence threats if he does not deliver money, and another local property restaurant was severely damaged by the fire. The owners believe that the alleged threats and extortions could be connected.
