Nearly $15m in gold stolen from ‘high-value container’ offloaded from plane at Toronto airport

Thieves have staged a massive gold heist at Toronto’s main international airport, stealing CA$20 million (USD $15 million) from a cargo terminal Monday in what police said was a ‘very rare’ theft.

The heist is the largest gold theft since July 2019, when $30 million was stolen from an airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn said Thursday that the container with the gold arrived early Monday evening in an airplane. He wouldn’t say where it came from.

The aircraft was unloaded and the cargo was taken to a storage facility.

Duivesteyn said the container had been “illegally removed” and was reported missing shortly after the plane was unloaded.

Toronto’s Pearson Airport – the main international airport in the city, and a significant cargo terminal

‘A plane arrived at the airport here in the early evening. As per normal procedure, the aircraft was unloaded and the cargo was moved from the aircraft to a storage facility,” he said.

It is not known whether the gold will remain in the country.

The Ottawa sun reported that the gold may have been shipped to Toronto from a mine in Northern Ontario for one of the banks.

Duivesteyn said police have not yet confirmed that the thieves were a professional gang, but the investigation is ongoing.

The Toronto sun reported that organized crime gangs were suspected of being behind the theft.

‘We consider this an isolated incident,’ says Duivesteyn.

“Therefore, for the traveling public who are concerned about coming and flying, they need not worry. We don’t consider this a matter of public safety.”

Duivesteyn said the theft was “very rare.”.

It is the largest airport robbery since the Brazilian robbery in 2019.

The suspects entered the airport of Guarulhos in São Paulo disguised as police officers and took the gold, which was destined for New York and Zurich.

In less than three minutes, eight gunmen disguised as officers who had arrived in two fake police vans stole the gold without firing a shot.

The thieves took two security guards and the family of one of them hostage to force their help, police reports said.

The cargo was heavy and the thieves decided to use airport staff and some trucks to get it into one of the vans before fleeing.

Hours later, the hostages were released and the vehicles were left in Sao Paulo.

Canadian police on Thursday said there was no threat to the public from Monday’s robbery

The thieves made off with gold and other valuables, police said Thursday

Three people were arrested – all airport employees.

One of the biggest gold heists in history was the 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery, in which thieves stole £26 million ($32 million) from a depot near London’s Heathrow Airport.

It was the biggest robbery in world history at the time and changed British police forever.

Attempts to get rid of the gold would now have led to large-scale international money laundering.

Much of the gold was never recovered and only two of the six robbers were ever convicted.

Perhaps the most famous airport robbery was the 1967 theft of an Air France plane at New York’s JFK airport, which was immortalized in the movie Goodfellas.

The airline had a contract to carry US currency back to America from troops fighting in Vietnam, and the gang – members of the Lucchese Mafia family – stole $420,000, or about $3.5 million in today’s money.

Eleven years later, the gang would strike again, targeting a Lufthansa flight at JFK and making off with $5.9 million — the equivalent of $25 million today.

Only one person, airport worker Louis Werner, was ever convicted.