Guilty plea expected in audacious 2015 silver theft
A West Island resident is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to playing a role in the theft of more than $10 million worth of silver ingots stolen from the Port of Montreal more than three years ago. On Oct. 24, Norberto Cordeiro, 52, who resides in an apartment building on Lakeshore Dr. overlooking Valois Bay in PointeClaire, announced his intention (through a lawyer representing him that day at the Montreal courthouse) to plead guilty to a charge or charges related to Project Silver, the Montreal police investigation into the audacious heist. Cordeiro’s case is the last one pending among those arrested in connection with the theft. On the morning of Sept. 2, 2015, truck driver Daniel Octavian Popa, now 29, was able to drive away from the port with a container loaded with 16 tons of silver (most of it in the form of large ingots) and cash. Popa was reportedly hired to work for a transport company less than a month before the heist and was authorized to pick up a container holding a much less valuable cargo on the day in question. He was able to leave the port’s Racine terminal without raising suspicions. The container was discovered three days later in Repentigny, but by then all of the silver and cash had been removed. In the days that followed, the Montreal police executed a series of search warrants in PointeClaire, Outremont, Île Perrot and the St-Laurent borough, but managed to recover only 150 of the stolen silver ingots. According to sources familiar with the investigation, roughly two-thirds of the silver is still unaccounted for. As was explained in court on May 9, when Popa pleaded guilty to possessing property obtained by crime, he was the key to the theft because he possessed a biometric security card that allowed him to access the Port of Montreal. After he turned himself in to police in 2015, Popa told investigators that he had been intimidated into driving off with the container. When he pleaded guilty, Quebec Court Judge Lori Renée Weitzman was informed that Popa was prepared to testify against the man who intimidated him and that the same person (not Cordeiro) continued to intimidate him when they would show up at the Montreal courthouse for court dates on the same day. The same person was charged in Project Silver, but was ultimately acquitted on all charges. “(Popa) was always ready to testify against the person who intimidated him. He collaborated with the authorities,” defence lawyer Clemente Monterosso said in May while he and prosecutor Cynthia Gyenizse explained the joint recommendation on the relatively light sentence Popa would ultimately receive in the case despite having played what Gyenizse called “a primordial” role in the theft. Weitzman agreed with the recommendation that Popa receive a sentence of two years less a day to be served in the community. The first 12 months of the sentence involve a form of house arrest where he is only allowed to leave home for work or to attend a course for which he had registered. During the second half of the sentence, Popa is expected to respect a curfew for 12 months. As part of his conditional sentence he is not allowed to communicate with the other men who were charged in Project Silver, including Cordeiro. Another person who pleaded guilty in Project Silver, Jaswinder Singh, 38, of Île Perrot, originally faced the same charges as Cordeiro, including an allegation that they conspired with Popa and three other men to steal the silver. The three other men were all eventually acquitted and, on July 10, Singh was able to plead guilty to a modified charge after Gyenizse conceded that the Crown’s case against him “faded” when a witness in the investigation was no longer able to identify him as a “main character” in the conspiracy. By pleading guilty to having received less than $5,000 in stolen goods, Singh avoided undergoing what was scheduled to have been a five-day trial last August. Like Popa, he received no jail time as part of his sentence, which involved a conditional discharge if Singh could make a total of $20,000 in donations to four groups including CAVAC, a provincial service that assists the victims of crime, within three months. Quebec Court Judge Pierre Labelle said he accepted the “very lenient” joint recommendation made on Singh’s sentence because he was made aware that the chances of proving his role in the theft beyond a reasonable doubt “were not that good.” Cordeiro does not have a criminal record in Quebec but, on June 29, 2015, just two months before the silver was stolen from the port, a Montreal police investigator testifying at the bail hearing of Darrell Van Elk, 52, of Dollard-desOrmeaux, alleged that Cordeiro was believed to be a major drug trafficker in Montreal. The investigator referred to Cordeiro while reading off a list of people who had been seen meeting with Van Elk while he was under police surveillance in a cocaine trafficking investigation. The list included members of the Hells Angels and associates of the Montreal Mafia.