Of all of the ways to GRADUATE from 3HO, getting arrested for a felony should be the lowest on your list. Sure, the newspaper and television spots can be exciting, and when your children go swimming at the local pool other kids will say “Isn’t that your Dad on tv?”
For many years, my status in my 3HO community was that of a very good Sikh and son of Guru Gobind Singh. My wife and I had been in charge of 3HO Ashrams in the Hawaiian Islands and in Los Angeles. We believed that we were spiritual teachers and we led by example. We were honored at the largest Sikh Holiday in Los Angeles, Baisakhi Day, with the privilege to be the Guru’s Servants, Sevadars, and sit behind the Siri Guru Granth Sahib ji in front of the Sangat that had gathered from around the world. Through the years I had received many letters from my spiritual teacher Yogi Bhajan. He once remarked that he could not find the end to the depth of my heart and that he was very proud to call me his son.
Then this happened…
It was a Friday in downtown Monterey. It was before lunch, and my wife Gur Siri and I were catching up on our work in anticipation of the weekend. I glanced up to see a face flash into and then out of the doorway. That was strange. Then, four police officers and two district attorney investigators barged into the office, blocking any escape path and limiting any personal space. They told Gur Siri to “step away from the computer, NOW!” and then they pushed her to the back of the office next to me. We were both scared to death and totally confused. “You know why we’re here and you’re not going to get away with it!” investigator Stryker barked as she ordered my arrest and I was hand cuffed and paraded through the building and into a waiting police squad car.
As I was being walked to the squad car, I heard the telephone ringing and the police stopping just long enough to listen – they wouldn’t let me answer the phone; they wanted to let the answering machine get it. It was Kirpal Singh Khalsa calling from Los Angeles, and boy was he mad. Kirpal was completely unaware that he had an audience of police and district attorney investigators listening intently and hanging on every word he said. For some reason it was so still and quiet that you could have heard a pin drop. Kirpal was agitated and upset because he hadn’t received the mail that I was supposed to forward to him that day. This announcement sure caught the attention of the public servants. Four now stayed behind in my office while two drove me to the station.
After I was booked at the police station, I was led down a hallway that must have had twenty coats of paint on the walls. A steel door shut behind me and my escort. Our footsteps echoed as we walked on the concrete floor. When we arrived at my assigned cell, I was told to stand still as the handcuffs were removed from my wrists. The guard motioned to me to go inside the cell. I heard the cold steel door shut behind me.
I sat down on the bench in my cell, alone. I had never been in jail before. This was an experience I believed I could do without. I had plenty of time to think about how it was that I came to be in the Monterey, CA. city jail. It was just minutes ago that I was working in my downtown office. I went over all the morning’s events in my mind, and I really didn’t have a clue as to why I was there.
As I was sitting in the silence of my cell, I heard footsteps approaching and the rattle of keys. The guard asked me if I knew why I was there. I looked him in the eye, shook my head and told him that I had thought about it and I didn’t have a clue. I was hoping that perhaps he would let me know why I was there, but he just opened the door and told me to stand. I was free to go for now; Gur Siri had secured my bail. I saw her standing in the hallway and we embraced. We were very confused as to the events that had occurred over the last six hours. We drove home, stunned and in silence as our minds grasped to understand.
Scared and unsure, we opened our front door and instinctively called to our children to make sure that they were ok, and then we told them that dad had been arrested and taken to and released from jail, and now we were all confused. Gur Siri turned on the television to catch the evening news – nothing. My attorney (Mr. Rosen) called and asked if we had any idea as to why I was arrested because he didn’t have a clue. We told him that we were also without a clue.
Saturday morning came after a long sleepless night. After our morning routine, Gur Siri made some breakfast and turned on the television. There was a breaking local news story. The caption read that the kingpin of an international telemarketing fraud ring had been arrested, and then my picture appeared on the television screen. Suddenly we were all sitting down for this. I was being billed as the head guy, “kingpin,” in an international telemarketing fraud ring? This came as a shock to my family and the community. We were all stunned.
We all tell attorney jokes until we need one. That morning, I had an appointment with my defense attorney, Mr. Rosen. As my wife and I walked into his office, he asked me directly if I had any knowledge as to why I was under arrest. I answered “Only what I saw on TV today.” Mr. Rosen told me that he had also seen the tv news and that that was all he knew too. Then he asked me if I had any knowledge of or association with a man named Guru Jot Singh Khalsa. I answered that I knew of a Guru Jot Singh Khalsa and that he was Yogi Bhajan’s Foreign Secretary and Head of all East Coast Operations and took orders from and answered only to Yogi Bhajan, and that the reason I knew him by sight was because when he was around Yogi Bhajan, he was never more than six feet from his side. Guru Jot Singh was a secretive man of few words, almost mafia-like in his behavior.
Mr. Rosen then spun his computer screen around for my me and my wife to see, and there on that screen was a shocking story: “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. GURU JOT SINGH KHALSA, United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia” for importing into the United States 45 tons of marijuana, grenade launchers, and firearms with silencers, in addition to other serious counts including but not limited to money laundering.
My wife and I were in shock. We had more questions than answers. What had we stumbled into and where did this fit into what was going on in our lives now? This news came as a blow to our beliefs. We were sure that Yogi Bhajan would be embarrassed of such behavior and public embarrassment. Wow, what the hell is going on? This was a really bad experience getting worse. We left our attorney’s office and drove back to our house. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before.
The next morning, we went back to the office. Sometime during the morning, Gur Siri picked up the office telephone to make a call. She expected to hear a dial tone, but instead she heard a man’s voice talking to another man, saying, “You want to make sure that you connect the green and red pair of wires when you make your connection.”
Our telephone was being tapped and our conversations were being monitored and recorded! We wondered what else they might be doing. We drove home knowing that our home phones were probably being tapped also. We didn’t sleep. We expected the SWAT team to crash through our windows in the middle of the night. We couldn’t watch any tv shows about crime because we thought that we would be invaded by law enforcement at any time just like on tv. We were traumatized.
MORE TO COME ….