Canadian police have learned that the perpetrators of the largest gold theft in Canadian history melted down bullion in the basement of a jewelry store in the vicinity of Toronto. This is reported by the National Post.
According to police, most of the 400 kilograms of gold bullion stolen at Toronto Airport was melted down in a workshop in the basement of a small jewelry store. During the search of the store, law enforcement officers found melting equipment, as well as a device that can twist metal and shape it into bracelets.
Investigators believe that this equipment was used to turn bars with serial numbers into untraceable jewelry. “We believe that a large amount of gold was melted down there, but not all of it. At the moment, I can’t go into details about why we believe this, but I can say that it happened thanks to our investigation,” said Detective Sergeant Mike Maviti, the curator of the investigation, codenamed the 24 Carat Project.
Earlier, the police managed to find five homemade bracelets made of melted gold, the cost of which is estimated at 90 thousand dollars (8.5 million rubles). In addition, the investigation identified nine people allegedly involved in the theft. Six of them have already been detained. Two suspects were employees of Air Canada, but only one of them was detained.
On April 17, 2023, gold bars worth about $15 million (1.4 billion rubles), as well as banknotes and other valuable items worth about seven million dollars (660 million rubles) were stolen from Lester B. Pearson International Airport. An Air Canada flight carrying a container with valuables arrived in Toronto from Zurich. Shortly after unloading the plane, the gold disappeared.
A few months later, in September 2023, the American police stopped a driver in Pennsylvania who violated traffic rules. He tried to abandon the car and escape, but was eventually detained. The man was in the United States illegally and, as it later turned out, participated in the theft of gold. Dozens of firearms were found in his car, which were going to be smuggled to Canada.
It was the largest gold theft in the world since 2019, when criminals took out gold bars worth $30 million (2.8 billion rubles) from the Sao Paulo airport. It ranks first in scale in the history of Canada and sixth in the world.