$15 Million in Gold Stolen From Toronto Airport by Theives

Thieves made off with a container carrying nearly $15 million in gold and other high value items at Toronto Pearson Airport on Monday.

The cargo container was taken after being unloaded from an aircraft early in the evening on Monday, Peel Regional Police Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn told reporters Thursday, as reported by CBS News. After being removed from the aircraft, the cargo was sent to a holding facility at the airport, which is standard operating procedure.

Sometime later the container, which was about five feet in size, was "removed by illegal means" and reported missing to the police shortly afterward.

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

Airport officials declined to provide additional details about the intended route or destination of the valuables in the container. They were also hesitant to label the crime a “professional” robbery yet. However, the heist would have required a fair amount of sophistication and knowledge to pull off. (Oceans 11 comes to mind).

Duivesteyn stressed that a robbery of this type is very rare and is an isolated incident. He also pointed out that it poses no continuing threat to public safety and added that operations at the airport will continue to run normally, CBS News reported.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), which operates Pearson, also issued a statement on the heist, stressing that the robbery poses no threat to passengers.

“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,” GTAA said in a statement provided to CBS News.

The gold stolen is estimated to be about 1.6 metric tons or 3,527 pounds. The robbery may end up being one of the biggest in Canadian history, according to The Points Guy.

The name of the airline that was carrying the cargo has not been officially released. Though the Toronto Sun reported that it received confidential documents that indicate it was an Air Canada plane that had shipped the gold. The same publication also reported that the gold may have been part of a shipment for TD Bank.

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