Toronto airport heist: $15M container of gold, valuable items stolen from cargo facility

A container stocked with an estimated $15 million worth of gold and “other items of monetary value” has been stolen from Canada’s busiest airport, police say. 

The incident happened Monday at Pearson International airport in Toronto after a plane carrying the goods unloaded its cargo to a facility away from the airport’s passenger terminals. 

“On Monday, April 17, 2023, 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,” Peel Regional Police Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn told reporters Thursday. 

“Once this cargo was offloaded at a holding facility, subsequent to its arrival, this high value container was removed by illegal means from the holding facility,” he continued. “This cargo was reported missing to the Peel Regional Police a short time later and an investigation has commenced.” 

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Duivesteyn said authorities estimate the value of the missing container to be $15 million. 

As of Friday, the whereabouts of the container is unknown and no arrests have been made. 

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Duivesteyn said “our investigators have their eyes open to all avenues,” according to The Associated Press. 

But he noted that it was too early to say if the theft was a professional operation. 

“The Greater Toronto Airports Authority is aware of the theft that took place this week. 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,” the airport said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “This did not involve access to Toronto Pearson itself and did not pose a threat to passengers or GTAA staff.”

 

On its website, the airport said it is the “busiest” in Canada. 

“In 2019, 50.5 million passengers travelled through Pearson,” the website says.