Montreal police hunt beef jerky ’n’ beer bandits

$500K worth of ale, snacks stolen from warehouse

MONTREAL • Police appeals for the public’s help solving a crime typically feature grainy security-camera images or mugs shots of unsavoury-looking characters.

The bulletin published this week by police in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil looked more like an invitation to a party.

Illustrated with colour photos of Grolsch beer cans and packages of Jack Link’s beef jerky and pepperoni, the notice announced that $500,000 worth of beer and cured beef snacks had vanished last month from an industrial park warehouse.

“The thieves have approached different businesses in an attempt to sell their loot,” the Longueuil police said.

“We fear that other honest merchants will be targeted, so we are suggesting that owners who are approached to buy cases of Grolsch beer verify that it is their usual supplier and be wary of questionable payment methods.”

Investigators are asking anyone solicited to buy suspect beer, jerky or pepperoni to contact them.

It was around 5:30 a.m. on March 12 that police got a 911 call reporting a break-in and “a substantial theft” at a warehouse. Three delivery trucks, 20,000 cases of beer worth about $380,000 and cured beef products worth about $120,000 had gone missing overnight.

Mélanie Mercille, a spokeswoman for the Longueuil police, said security cameras that might have captured the theft had been broken, pointing to a professional operation. “It was a major theft,” she said.

Mercille said the thieves loaded the beer into the trucks and drove off. The abandoned trucks were found the same day at three different locations across the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, empty except for 80 cases of beer that the thieves apparently ha no room for.

She declined to say how many stores had been approached with the illicit goods or where they were located. In Quebec, beer is sold in corner stores and supermarkets.

Michel Doyon, vice-president of Clark Drouin Lefebvre Inc., which distributes Grolsch and Jack’s Links products in Quebec, said the theft was discovered when a worker showed up at the warehouse in the morning. “It had been cleaned out,” he said.

Doyon is hoping the investigation will lead to the recovery of the merchandise, but in the meantime he was able to order replacement stock from Holland, where Grolsch is brewed.

“It did not affect us too much because we still were able to sell as many cases as we did for the same period last year,” he said.

Pierre-Alexandre Blouin, assistant general manager of the Association des détaillants en alimentation du Québec, which represents grocers in the province, said the scale of the robbery was “pretty exceptional. Normally we don’t lose those shipments.”

He predicted the thieves could have a hard time unloading their haul. Stores selling large quantities of beer have agreements with suppliers, and a delivery person who arrived to see fully stocked shelves of Grolsch would immediately be suspicious.

He said there are “informal” markets, including online, but the quantity of beer to be unloaded is “enormous.” The 20,000 cases of Grolsch total 480,000 500-millilitre cans, or 240,000 litres of beer.

Major beer thefts are not unknown in Canada. Just last January, a trailer filled with more than 2,500 cases of Coors Light was stolen in Delta, B.C. In one of the more notorious cases, New Brunswick’s self-described “beer bandit,” Wade Haines, was found guilty in 2005 of stealing 50,400 cans of Moosehead beer destined for Mexico. He was sentenced to 19 months in jail.