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Aman Singh had much to consider as he lay in the dirt of a Central Valley almond orchard, his flesh caked in a moulage of blood and bruises.
Mostly he was angry at the men the FBI said wanted him brutalized.
Singh’s face looked swollen and one of his eyes blackened. Dark red scratches covered his arm.
But the wounds weren’t that bad, considering none of them were real — just a couple hours work by a San Francisco makeup artist.
As FBI agents crowded around him snapping photos, Singh was happy to help stage the fake assault. He hoped it would help federal agents ensnare the men accused of plotting his beating.
But as bizarre as this scene was — a fake assault staged by law enforcement — it was only part of a much broader war between truckers and real estate developers in the Central Valley, former friends turned enemies on opposite sides of a legal battle that turned violent and led to what federal prosecutors charged was a murder-for-hire plot.
“They were going to cut him up and put him in a suitcase,” Singh told The Times.
It all started with a fight over a planned truck depot, according to the criminal charges.
In October 2021, Sukhwant Singh — no relation to Aman Singh — purchased a 22-acre empty lot off bustling Interstate 5, in Stockton, for $2.6 million.
But Sukhwant Singh claimed the property was soon fraudulently transferred out of his name by some of his associates, he said in a lawsuit filed in San Joaquin County Superior Court.
Named in the lawsuit were three men Sukhwant Singh had known a long time: Jagninder Boparai, Ramesh Birla, and Shaminderjit Sandhu — the same three men who would later be charged with trying to have Sukhwant killed.
All of the men belonged to the Central Valley’s community of Sikh trucking entrepreneurs, and Sukhwant Singh, who operates a truck driving school, had known Boparai in particular for decades. The two had once been friends who would drink and eat together, and both had worked as truck drivers before getting involved in real estate.
In his lawsuit, Sukhwant Singh claims that Boparai, Birla and Sandhu cheated him out of the property through a fraudulent land transfer in 2022. In Sukhwant’s eyes, they stole the property out from under him. The lawsuit in San Joaquin Superior Court is still pending.
At around the same time, Sukhwant Singh said he began receiving threatening messages from the men, including intimidating videos and images. Birla even threatened to kill Sukhwant Singh at least twice, according to the suit.
Sukhwant Singh said he began to fear for his life. If he were to die, the men would be able to take other properties that belonged to him through similar fraudulent transactions, he said in the lawsuit.
Aman Singh, who had also worked as a trucker and knew all of the men, attended the court case to lend support for Sukhwant Singh. He recalls things becoming very tense, and Boparai cursing at him outside the courthouse. Taking Sukhwant Singh’s side in the case caused Boparai and the others to target Aman Singh for the assault, Aman Singh said in an interview.
Judging from a federal indictment, Sukhwant Singh had reason to worry about his safety.
Boparai and his associates had already begun planning to kill him, and had devised a side plot that would explain away the businessman’s disappearance, according to the indictment filed in court by federal prosecutors.
What if Sukhwant Singh disappeared because he was actually planning to kill them?
It was a reverse murder plan, where the men allegedly planning the killing posited themselves as the victims of the murder plot, prosecutors said in the indictment.
But before they could complete their plan, Sukhwant Singh caught wind of the scheme, he said.
Boparai had been trying to find someone to carry out the killing, and he had enlisted a longtime friend of his — a man who had also known Sukhwant Singh for about two decades — to help him plan the hit.
The man, who requested anonymity to speak candidly with The Times about the murder plot, recognized Sukhwant Singh as his old friend, but continued to speak with Boparai about the plan.
Boparai thought the man had contacts in the criminal world because the man had worked in marijuana in the past.
He told The Times that Boparai offered him $100,000, then $300,000, then $1 million to help him find someone to commit the hit. Boparai insisted that the money would come from the sale of the trucking depot property that used to belong to Sukhwant Singh.
But instead of helping Boparai find someone who could kill Sukhwant Singh, the man said he informed his old acquaintance about the plot to kill him.
Sukhwant Singh and Aman Singh went to Amo Virk, a private investigator they knew, asking for help.
Two days later, on Feb. 13, 2023, with Virk’s help, Sukhwant Singh was interviewed by an FBI agent.
Sukhwant Singh explained to the agent the dispute over the land. After they transferred the property out of Sukhwant Singh’s company, the property now belonged to Boparai, Birla, and Sandhu and they were collecting rent from a truck driving school that leased it.
It did not take the FBI long to make their move.
Just three days after Sukhwant Singh spoke to Special Agent Brian Toy, Boparai was setting up a meeting with a man he believed could help him with his plans. But the man was not a hitman. He was a confidential informant for the FBI, a citizen with a criminal record who has helped the FBI investigate dozens of crimes, according to the indictment filed in federal court by Toy.
He met the man at a Starbucks in Manteca and they sat at an outdoor table. Boparai explained the situation as a wire recorded the conversation. He said he wanted Aman Singh beaten and that after that he had another job planned, according to the indictment.
Birla came to the meeting with the informant and made more explicit what they wanted done to Aman.
“We want to see bruises, we want that fool f—ed up not just pop knocking, right? We want to see some blood, we want to see some, we want the fool f—ed up. Not just like, slap him,” he said, according to the indictment.
Boparai and Birla offered the informant $6,000 for the beatdown, $1,000 up front and $5,000 more after Aman was assaulted, according to the indictment.
On March 14, the informant met with Boparai again. He told Boparai that he had followed Aman, kidnapped him, taken him to an orchard and assaulted him.
He showed Boparai a photo of Aman lying on his back in the orchard, seemingly covered in blood. Boparai looked at the photo.
“I like it,” he said.
Then they spoke about the second job that Boparai wanted accomplished.
“I don’t want to see the body,” Boparai said, according to the indictment. “Just tell me a number for how much.”
“For what?” the informant responded.
“For the guy to disappear,” Boparai said, according to the indictment.
The FBI informant also set rules for how they would talk about the killing. Instead of speaking directly about homicide, they would refer to the job as chopping up a tree, the informant said.
A few days later, on March 24, the informant met with Sandhu and Birla.
Sandhu told the informant that they wanted the body removed to Mexico in a suitcase.
“Cut, burn, and then no evidence,” he said, according to the transcript filed in court.
Birla chimed in: “We don’t even want dental records.”
They also wanted the informant to break Sukhwant Singh’s phone right after killing him, according to the FBI. They explained to the informant that “the feds” might be tracking the target’s phone because they had told law enforcement that Sukhwant Singh was trying to kill them.
But federal investigators have said they found no evidence of any plot to harm Sandhu, Boparai or Birla.
One week later, on March 31, Boparai, Birla and Sandhu were arrested and indicted on charges of murder-for-hire conspiracy.
In January of this year, Boparai pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire conspiracy, admitting that he “conspired with his codefendants to murder [Sukhwant Singh].”
Sandhu and Birla have pleaded not guilty. Sandhu’s lawyer declined to comment and Birla’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sukhwant Singh and Aman Singh escaped their situation without a real scratch, but the psychic trauma and legal ramifications still haunt them.
“I still get paranoid,” Aman Singh said in an interview with The Times. “I look outside windows sometimes. I never used to do that. When I’m driving I’m always looking back now. I’m affected a lot.”
Sukhwant Singh, meanwhile, still does not have ownership over the truck depot property. Despite the FBI’s unveiling of the murder-for-hire plot, the parcel still belongs to the company controlled by the defendants in the federal case.
“It’s still not under my name,” Sukhwant Singh said of the property, which makes $58,000 per month in rent. That rent goes to the entity owned by the defendants.
Sukhwant Singh said he has lost millions due to the transfer of the property and that the cases have flipped his life upside down.
“This destroyed my life, my family, my own mental condition. I’m still not at the same place where I was three years ago,” he said.
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