BURST
When Brittani Russell contacted Langley RCMP last year about a crime blogger posting veiled threats against her, she expected it would get taken seriously.
Instead, the officer who came to her home last December suggested she just ignore the posts on the Dirty Newz’s website and social media accounts, Russell said Thursday.
Since learning this week that the site’s founder allegedly conspired with an international crime group to get a witness killed in Colombia, she realizes how at risk she was.
“This was such a lapse in judgment by the RCMP. I want some accountability here,” Russell said. “I’m sick to my stomach. I can’t believe that my life didn’t matter at all, and for a year, I was at risk this whole time without even knowing.”
Russell provided Postmedia News with more than two dozen online exchanges with Gursewak Singh Bal, a.k.a. 6ixademiks, who was charged in the U.S. this week with conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly being part of a criminal group headed by former Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding.
The most threatening message said: “You keep talking eh … now we will finish you. Going to make you a trending topic just now. Don’t even be seen outside in B.C. Goof.”
Other messages called the Indigenous woman racist names and falsely claimed she was a sex-trade worker. Fake accounts were made in her name, showing photographs of family and friends, she said. The most frightening thing posted on Bal’s site was a video taken from her driveway.
Russell said she doesn’t really know why Bal turned so hostile, but believes it all started when he began posting comments on her X account to criticize something she had written. She responded. It escalated from there.
“I told him I was going to call the RCMP … I was like, ‘Please stop harassing me,’ ” she said.
She monitored his site at the height of their dispute a year ago and saw some of the disturbing posts about “informants” that he claimed had gone missing. One of them that she copied on Dec. 18, 2024, has a man’s photo and, “They definitely smoked the informant. RIP.”
The U.S. indictment said Bal was paid US$10,000 by a Wedding associate and told to post a photo of the witness so he “could be located and killed.” Bal did, as instructed, on Nov. 5, 2024, with a caption that said, “this guy single-handedly ratted out one of the strongest underworld networks that this world has seen. Good chance, he’ll never be found again.” The witness was murdered at a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia, on Jan. 31, 2005.
The same day, “Bal posted a story depicting a photograph of the restaurant and the bottom part of a body lying on the ground, and a caption that read: ‘(Victim A) down … ‘ (and) ‘ BOOM! Headshot.’ ”
Russell said she showed the officer who came to her home on Dec. 24 the disturbing content of his site, along with all the posts about her that she had copied and saved.
“I showed him the stories on my phone. I’m like, ‘Look at this page. He’s doxing women,’ ” Russell said.
The officer told her to get off social media and said police already knew about the site.
Now she wonders if the murder in Colombia could have been prevented if her complaint to the police about the blogger had been taken more seriously.
No one from the Langley RCMP responded Thursday to emails or calls requesting comment.
On Tuesday, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office seized the well-known site, meaning the link now goes straight to a message saying the seizure was “part of a co-ordinated, law-enforcement action taken against members and associates of the Ryan Wedding criminal enterprise.”
Bluesky: @kimbolan.bsky.social