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A Manteca man pleaded guilty to a murder-for-hire scheme allegedly carried out with two other men from Dublin and Tracy, Acting U.S. Attorney Michel Beckwith announced.
Jagninder Singh Boparai, 48, admitted last week to conspiring with two men — Ramesh Kumar Birla Jr., 45, from Dublin and Shaminderjit Singh Sandhu, 51, from Tracy — to murder “Victim 2”, according to prosecutors.
In February 2023, Boparai met with a person he believed to be a hitman at a Starbucks in Manteca who was actually an undercover FBI agent, prosecutors said.
Boparai told the supposed hitman that the first job involved the assault of “Victim 1”, and “once he proved his trustworthiness, he would be given another job,” the DOJ said.
The following day, Boparai met the confidential informant again and offered to pay $6,000 for the assault of Victim 1.
In March 2023, allegedly in the presence of Birla and another person, Boparai met with the confidential informant, and Boparai gave the undercover agent $1,000 as a down payment for the assault.
The confidential informant later showed Boparai a staged photo of Victim 1 laying on the ground covered in bruises, dirt and blood to indicate the assault had occurred. Boparai said he liked the photo and told the confidential informant that he had two other “jobs”, one of which involved robbing a business, and the other involved making a person “disappear”, prosecutors said.
According to court documents, in March 2023, Boparai met with the confidential informant to pay them $10,000 as a down payment for the murder of Victim 2. Sandhu allegedly provided Victim 2’s address, and Boparai instructed the confidential informant that Victim 2 must “disappear without any evidence remaining”, the DOJ said.
Boparai then made two calls to Birla asking for Victim 2’s Facebook profile, which he showed to the undercover agent.
On March 24, 2023, Sandhu and Birla allegedly met with the confidential informant in a parking lot in Manteca. Sandhu and Birla claimed that Boparai was out of town, but Boparai was observed by surveillance remaining in a car in the same parking lot, according to prosecutors. Sandhu and Birla allegedly instructed the confidential informant to kill Victim 2 and take Victim 2’s remains to Mexico in a suitcase.
All three defendants were arrested on March 31, 2023, and are currently in federal custody.
After entering his guilty plea on Jan. 23, Boparai is scheduled to be sentenced on May 8 and faces a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
The remaining two defendants are next due in court on April 10. If convicted, they each face the same penalties as Boparai, the DOJ said.
— Story by Katy St. Clair, Bay City News Service
