Nearly $15 million of gold and valuables stolen in heist from Toronto’s Pearson Airport

A container sporting gold and different “high value” pieces price a minimum of $20 million Canadian (greater than $14.8 million U.S.), was once stolen Monday from Toronto’s Pearson Airport, police mentioned.

The shipment arrived in an airplane early in the night time, Peel Regional Police inspector Stephen Duivesteyn instructed journalists on Thursday. The container was once then unloaded and transported to a preserving facility, in accordance with the airport’s usual procedures for air shipment. 

Sometime after this, the more or less 5 square-foot container was once “removed by illegal means” and reported lacking to the police in a while in a while.

“The container contained a high value shipment,” Inspector Duivesteyn mentioned. “It did contain gold, but was not exclusive to gold, and contained other items of monetary value.”

Police were not ready to substantiate the shipment’s ultimate vacation spot, nor if the robbery was once associated with arranged crime or skilled thieves. They additionally were not positive if the gold remains to be in the rustic.

Inspector Duivesteyn emphasised that whilst this type of heist is “very rare,” it’s an remoted incident that poses no ongoing danger to public protection. Operations at Pearson would proceed to run generally, he mentioned. 

“The GTAA wishes to clarify that thieves accessed the public side of a warehouse that is leased to a third party, outside of our primary security line. This did not involve access to Toronto Pearson itself and did not pose a threat to passengers or GTAA staff,” the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which operates Pearson, mentioned in a commentary to CBS News.

In 1953, 10 containers of gold bars on their option to Montreal vanished from Pearson (then Malton Airport) in a heist that hasn’t ever been solved, in line with the Toronto Star. 

Eighty years later, Duivesteyn appeared made up our minds to not let historical past repeat itself. 

“Our goal right now is to solve this theft,” he confident journalists. “Our team is assembled. They are working diligently on this case.”