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Millionaire NRI with 'murderous' streak

Shortly after Marvin Dodson pumped seven bullets into a New York motorist in 1997, authorities say he was greeted by a shadowy millionaire with a murderous mean streak.

''That was good,'' Dodson claims the man said before giving him 5,000 dollars. ''Good job.''

A jury is now being asked to decide if the man, Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, from the rural Punjab region of India, ordered that hit and one other as part of a mob-style enterprise, and if so, whether he deserves the death penalty.

''Dhinsa is a man who uses murder as a way of doing business,'' prosecutor Benton Campbell charged yesterday in closing arguments in a US district court.

Defence attorney Gerald Shargel responded by portraying his client as an enterprising immigrant who built a gas station empire. He said Dhinsa was a victim of rumours spread by fellow Sikhs competing for the American dream.

The community has condemned Dhinsa, Shargel said. ''Maybe it was because of his success. Who knows? ... Jealousy plays so rough.''

Dhinsa, 36, who lives in the New York Borough of Brooklyn, was indicted on federal racketeering charges in 1997. During the six-week trial, he was accused of rigging gas pumps to rip off motorists, evading taxes and using deadly force to protect his turf.

The defendant arrived in the United States in 1982. Broke, he took a job of pumping gas in the Bronx Borough. He soon scraped up enough money to lease that gas station, then boldly began opening others in the city's toughest neighbourhoods, Shargel said.

At its peak, City Gas had 51 stations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and employed 300 people. Annual revenues topped 60 million dollars, according to authorities.

But prosecutors said the success was tainted by corruption and violence.

The city's consumer affairs office repeatedly cited Dhinsa for overcharging customers. In 1990, he was arrested in the kidnap-torture of one of his attendants. He ended up serving 90 days in jail on lesser charges.

In 1995, another City Gas employee vanished. Authorities now believe that Dhinsa ordered him kidnapped for stealing from him.

The employee was never found. When the employee's brother later confronted Dhinsa, the businessman allegedly paid Dodson, a career criminal he had hired for security, to execute him.

Prosecutors said Dhinsa struck again in 1997 after he learned another man, cab driver Satinderjit Singh, was cooperating in an FBI investigation of City Gas.

During the trial, Dodson and another former employee, Walter Samuels, testified that Dhinsa personally orchestrated the broad-daylight killing of Singh on a street in the Borough of Queens.

At a meeting later that day, Dhinsa gave the killers 5,000 dollars each and told them ''all of us need a vacation,'' Dodson said.

The defence countered that Dodson and Samuels, who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the government, put the blame on Dhinsa to escape the death penalty themselves and get lighter sentences.

UNI

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