US Indian politician booked for fraud on election eve

Public safety was Paul Randhawa’s top priority if elected to the Fairfield City Council: to put more cops on the streets, get citizens ...

Public safety was Paul Randhawa’s top priority if elected to the Fairfield City Council: to put more cops on the streets, get citizens to be more pro-active about fighting crime.

Along with his wife and son, he now contemplates what might have been—from behind the bars of a San Francisco jail.

Randhawa and his wife and son were arrested last week on the eve of election day for allegedly bilking travelers out of over $50,000 in airline tickets to India, sold through a travel agency with an office in San Jose.

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Iqbal ‘Paul’ Randhawa, his wife, Gurdev ‘Debbie’ Randhawa, and their son, Manjinder ‘Manny’ Randhawa, are accused of multiple counts of grand theft, conspiracy and violating California’s ‘seller of travel’ law.

If convicted, Randhawa faces a maximum sentence of 13 years in prison and a fine of $375,000. Randhawa is presently being held in lieu of $1 million in bail, and his wife and son are being held in lieu of $500,000 each.

Chuck Hammond, a former mayor of Fairfield who is Randhawa’s campaign manager, questioned the timing of the charges.

“I really think it’s just a fabrication because we were leading in the polls,” Hammond said, noting that it has been impossible for Randhawa to give voters a response to the charges before they went to the polls.