Canada’s gold heist: Inside one of the biggest thefts in the annals of crime
Rick Madonik/Toronto Star/Getty Images
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.
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.
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.
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.
“This story is a sensational one,” Peel Regional Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah said Wednesday in announcing charges against nine suspects in the heist. “One which we jokingly say belongs in a Netflix series.”
Peel Regional Police
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.
“This isn’t just about gold. This is about how gold becomes guns,” said the official, Nando Iannicca, head of the Peel regional government, which is responsible for the airport. “It turns into people who are harmed or killed.”
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 – purchased in Florida and Georgia with proceeds from gold melted down after the heist – that he allegedly intended to smuggle into Canada.
Keeping those guns off the streets of Canada “saved lives without a doubt,” Duraiappah said. “This is a dotted line to people’s well being anywhere in this country wherever those firearms ended up.”
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.