The largest gold heist in Canadian history was carried out with remarkable ease: A fraudulent shipping document for a load of farm-raised Scottish salmon was used to brazenly snatch $14.5 million in gold bars and nearly $2 million in bank notes. <\/p>\n
The precious cargo arrived at Toronto Pearson International Airport from Zurich, Switzerland, a year ago last Wednesday. It was hauled nearby to a secure Air Canada cargo warehouse, where, hours later, a hulking white box truck backed into a loading dock. <\/p>\n
The truck driver wore dark clothing, a high-visibility vest and a face mask. He stepped out with a clipboard holding a duplicate of a consignment bill for a seafood shipment picked up the previous day. <\/p>\n
A forklift loaded a tightly sealed container into the back of the five-ton truck, where the driver nudged the load with his body to make sure it was secure. He pulled down the rear door and drove away. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis story is a sensational one,\u201d Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah said Wednesday in announcing charges against nine suspects in the heist. \u201cOne which we jokingly say belongs in a Netflix series.\u201d <\/p>\n
The heist actually was a sophisticated caper allegedly involving Air Canada insiders. It morphed into an international operation that, in the words of one official, worked a kind of reverse alchemy to turn gold into guns trafficked from the US intended for use by criminals on the streets of Canada. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about gold. This is about how gold becomes guns,\u201d said the official, Nando Iannicca, head of the Peel regional government, which is responsible for the airport. \u201cIt turns into people who are harmed or killed.\u201d <\/p>\n
In September, the man who allegedly drove the truck in the gold theft was arrested following a traffic stop in Pennsylvania with a cache of 65 guns \u2013 purchased in Florida and Georgia with proceeds from gold melted down after the heist \u2013 that he allegedly intended to smuggle into Canada. <\/p>\n
Keeping those guns off the streets of Canada \u201csaved lives without a doubt,\u201d Duraiappah said. \u201cThis is a dotted line to people\u2019s well being anywhere in this country wherever those firearms ended up.\u201d <\/p>\n
Details of the heist were gleaned from statements and interviews with Canadian and US law enforcement officials, court documents and surveillance footage and images released by police. <\/p>\n
In the annals of Canadian crime, only the great maple syrup heist of 2012 \u2013 in which millions of dollars worth of the sweet stuff were stolen from a warehouse holding Quebec\u2019s strategic syrup reserves \u2013 garnered as much attention around the world. That heist was the subject of an episode on a Netflix series. <\/p>\n
The gold heist is \u201calmost out of an \u2018Ocean\u2019s 11\u2019 movie or \u2018CSI,\u2019 \u201d Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, a city near Toronto Pearson International Airport, said as he stood with a group of police officers and other elected officials in front of the truck used in last year\u2019s heist. <\/p>\n
At 3:56 p.m. on April 17, 2023, a plane from Zurich landed in Toronto with a shipment of 6,600 gold bars weighing nearly 900 pounds and about $1.9 million in bank notes. <\/p>\n
The gold bars from a precious metals refining company in Switzerland were destined for a bank in Toronto. The bank notes were headed to the Vancouver Bullion & Currency Exchange. <\/p>\n
At 6:32 p.m., the suspect in the white box truck arrived at the Air Canada warehouse with a copy of an airway bill that had been printed out earlier at the same facility. <\/p>\n
The document said the shipment came from a seafood company in the United Kingdom that \u2013 according to the company website \u2013 specializes in the finest Atlantic salmon. It\u2019s destination was one of Canada\u2019s largest seafood distribution companies, which caters to luxury hotels and restaurants as well as chain and independent retailers. <\/p>\n
Instead of a load of farm-raised seafood, the truck driver pulled away from the loading dock with loot. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey needed people inside Air Canada to facilitate this theft,\u201d Peel Regional Police Det. Sgt. Mike Mavity said. <\/p>\n
At about 9:30 p.m., a Brink\u2019s security company armored truck arrived with the actual waybill for the shipment of pure gold and bank notes. Air Canada employees couldn\u2019t find the container and an internal investigation was started. The theft was reported to Peel police at 2:43 a.m. <\/p>\n
For weeks after the heist, investigators leading what police dubbed \u201cProject 24 karat\u201d painstakingly went over surveillance video from more than 200 businesses and residences along the side roads and highway route the truck had taken. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to find businesses that their video cameras obviously are focused on the highway, but capture the highway in the background. And we could perhaps sometimes see just a little snippet of the truck passing <\/strong>by and then we just kept following it,\u201d Mavity said. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery time the highway would meet a major intersection, we\u2019d have to go to video of that intersection and see if the truck got off. If it didn\u2019t we keep leapfrogging along. So it was very, very time consuming. These sort of investigations, it\u2019s not like TV at all.\u201d <\/p>\n