U.S. guilty plea for woman caught on video with Romanian-Canadian family who died on smuggling run

A woman captured on the parking lot camera of the Super 8 motel in Cornwall, Ont., picking up a Romanian-Canadian family days before their deaths on a human smuggling run pleaded guilty Thursday before a U.S. Federal Court to five counts of alien smuggling. 

Janet Terrance admitted to picking up the four members of the Iordache family on March 27, 2023, at the Super 8 and then driving them to a house on Cornwall Island, which sits across the St. Lawrence River from Cornwall. The family waited for a boat that never showed up, according to the plea agreement filed with the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of New York.

Terrance is one of four people named in a nine count indictment filed as a result of a U.S. Homeland Security Investigations probe into the deaths of nine people — including the Iordache family — who drowned after their boat capsized on the St. Lawrence River during a U.S.-bound human smuggling run on March 29, 2023. 

One of her co-accused, Dakota Montour, has already pleaded guilty. The other two, Stephanie Square and Rahsontanohstha Delormier, are now facing extradition to the U.S. following a ruling Thursday morning in Quebec Superior Court.

They were part of a small group of people in Akwesasne — an Indigenous community severed by the Canada-U.S. border about 120 kilometres west of Montreal — working for a human smuggling network run out of Montreal. 

Romanian citizens Florian Iordache, Cristina Iordache and their two Canadian-born children, Evelin, 2, and Elyen, 16 months, were facing deportation. They paid about $15,000 to a human smuggling network to get smuggled into the U.S., according to court records filed in Canadian court.

They shared the boat on the fatal voyage with a family of four from India, father Pravindbhai Chaudhari, mother Dakshaben, and their two adult children, son Mitkumar and daughter Vidhiben. The Chaudhari family paid $100,000 to the same network to be smuggled into the U.S., according to police and court records in Canada and India.  

A months-long investigation led by the RCMP found that the human smuggling network was headed by a Montreal man named Thesingarasan Rasiah, who is now in custody and facing multiple human smuggling charges. Many of the details in Terrance’s plea agreement dovetail with evidence gathered by the RCMP, according to court records filed in Ontario.

Terrance’s plea agreement is also linked to a separate guilty plea filed in U.S. Federal Court last October by Kawisiiostha Sharrow, also known as ‘Kawi’ or Cecilia. 

Sharrow said the Iordache family was “among the aliens [she] agreed to smuggle” for $2,500 in March 2023. She twice tried and failed to move the family across the river, according to Sharrow’s plea agreement. 

Sharrow paid Terrance $500 to pick up the Iordache family on March 27. Sharrow sent them back to Cornwall later that night by taxi after the boat failed to show, according to the document.

The next night, March 28, 2023, the Iordache family “refused to cross the St. Lawrence River because of inclement weather.” Sharrow agreed it was too rough, with “high winds, waves and darkness,” said the plea agreement.

The Iordache and Chaudhari families drowned the next night along with their boatman, Casey Oakes, of Akwesasne.