But it’s not the first heist of its kind in Canada – nor the first involving an airport.
This week, in a brazen pilferage, a “high-value container” disappeared while it was being transported to a cargo holding facility near Canada’s busiest airport.
Authorities say the thieves gained access to the public side of a warehouse near Toronto Pearson International Airport that was unmanned by airport security.
The theft, which is still under investigation, was an isolated and “very rare” incident, police say.
On Thursday evening, Peel Regional Police said the gold and other goods were stolen on Monday after containers were offloaded from an aircraft.
“An aircraft arrived here at the airport in the early evening. As per normal procedure, the aircraft was unloaded and cargo was transported from the aircraft to a holding cargo facility,” inspector Stephen Duivesteyn said while announcing the theft.
“What I can say is that the container [had] a high-value shipment. It did contain gold but was not exclusive to gold and contained other items of monetary value.”
Investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were also looking into the theft, which is one of the largest in Canadian history.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority, citing the “active police investigation”, declined to comment on the theft.
Goldmines from northern Ontario often ship bullion through the city’s airport, which handles nearly half of the country’s air cargo.
Duivesteyn said he wouldn’t call it a “professional” job at this time, adding that the investigation was ongoing and the incident was isolated.
Police did not identify the intended destination of the stolen cargo, nor did they confirm the gold was still in the country.
“This is very rare,” Duivesteyn said.
But it isn’t the first time a Toronto-area airport has made headlines for a gold heist.
While a heist of that magnitude is indeed rare, a look at Canadian history shows it’s not the first.
The Toronto Pearson International Airport has often been used as a hub for gold mining in the province of Ontario, and in September 1952 it was the scene of a mysterious heist.
Back then, Pearson was known by another name: Malton Airport. It is where thieves managed to steal about C$ 215,000 worth of gold bars (valued at about C$2.5m today).
The gold was stored in a steel mesh wire cage before it was loaded onto a Montreal-bound plane.
From there, it was destined to be shipped to the UK.
But when the plane arrived in Montreal, there were only four boxes of gold bullion out of 10.
According to articles from the Toronto Star at the time, the robbers were never spotted.
No suspects have been publicly named since the heist took place 70 years ago.
The gold “just seemed to vanish“, a police officer told reporters at the time.
Over 50 years ago, the title for the “Biggest Gold Heist” in Canadian history went to Ken Leishman’s bold theft of C$ 385,000 worth of the metal (valued at C$3.3m today) from Winnipeg airport in 1966.
Leishman, a thief nicknamed the Flying Bandit, caught wind of the fact that Winnipeg was a transit city for gold mine in northwestern Ontario, where it would then be shipped to Ottawa.
To carry out the robbery, Leishman recruited a team of criminals to pose as gold salespeople and airline employees, and they were able to determine the timing of an upcoming shipment and infiltrate airport security.
With the help of fake paperwork, Leishman and his accomplices managed to get their hands on the shipment and successfully fled the tarmac with the gold.
But they were caught a few days later and Leishman was jailed.
Notably, Leishman turned his life around
The trained pilot flew patients from remote areas to city hospitals after his release from prison and died a tragic death in a plane crash in 1979.
Eight years after the Winnipeg robbery, in 1974, an even larger gold heist followed, this time at the Ottawa International Airport.
The Stopwatch Gang – a group of three criminals who staged bank robberies in both the US and Canada – stole six unrefined gold bars valued at C$750,000 (C$4,3m today).
The gang threatened a lone security guard at gunpoint in the middle of the night and then handcuffed him to a pipe before getting a hold of the gold, which was stored inside a cage at a freight terminal secured by a small padlock.
The trio was eventually caught, only to escape from prison and carry out more robberies in the US before they were arrested by FBI agents.
While Canada has an impressive history of gold heists, none come quite close to one that has been dubbed the “Crime of the Century” in the UK, involving the theft of gold bullion in November 1983, valued then at £26m.
In today’s currency, that amount is worth around £112m, or C$188m in Canadian dollars.
The robbery unfolded after six armed men broke into the Brink’s-Mat depot near London’s Heathrow Airport, with the help of one of the security guards who were in on the theft.
They were expecting to find large sums of foreign currency. Instead, they stumbled on precious gold, diamonds, and cash.
The theft led police on a lengthy chase to find all of those who were involved, as the criminals enlisted the help of others to help turn gold into cash.
Many murders over the years have been linked back to the robbery, as well as a few suicides. Much of the gold has never been recovered and four out of the six original robbers were never convicted.
The heist was one of the largest in world history at the time and had a lasting impact on both the British public and the police.
A BBC TV drama depicting the robbery and its aftermath stated that “if you have bought gold jewelry in Britain since 1984, it is likely to contain traces of the Brink’s-Mat gold”.
