Maple syrup thief handed five-year sentence
Man explodes in anger as judge passes sentence
For Avik Caron, opportunity came knocking in 2011 when the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers rented a warehouse partly owned by his wife to store that year’s harvest.
As if he had been handed the keys to a bank vault, Caron almost immediately began looking for a blackmarket buyer who could convert the syrup-filled barrels into cash in his pocket.
As he sentenced Caron Friday to a five-year prison term and a $1.2-million fine, Quebec Court Judge Jacques Lacoursière called Caron the “instigator” of a brazen theft that went on for a year and netted nearly 3,000 tonnes of syrup.
“The Court regards this matter as the perfect illustration of the maxim, ‘Opportunity makes the thief,’ ” Lacoursière said in his Trois-Rivières courtroom.
Caron, who pleaded guilty in January to charges of theft and trafficking related to the disappearance of maple syrup worth $18.7 million, exploded with anger when he heard the stiff sentence.
According to a report in Le Nouvelliste, he said he had been misled into pleading guilty by his defence lawyer and demanded that he be granted a trial. When the judge refused, Caron swore at him, banged on a door in the prisoner’s box and tussled with a guard who tried to restrain him, the newspaper reported.
Lacoursière said Caron’s guilty plea was an attenuating factor, but he noted that his theft made victims of 10,000 producers who rely on the federation to store and market their maple syrup. And the fact that the thieves moved the stolen syrup in containers not approved for food storage displayed a disregard for public health, the judge said.
“According to the evidence, some accomplices fell sick after tasting the (stolen) syrup,” he said.
At his sentencing hearing, Caron testified that soon after the federation began filling the warehouse with syrup, a friend introduced him to Richard Vallières, a so-called “barrel roller” known for skirting the syrup federation’s supply management system. A jury found Vallières, his father Raymond and New Brunswick syrup buyer Étienne St-Pierre guilty of charges related to the syrup heist last November. They are awaiting sentencing.
Beginning in the summer of 2011, the thieves used a tractor-trailer to load up barrels filled with syrup from the spring harvest. The barrels were transported to a sugar shack belonging to Raymond Vallières, where they were emptied and filled with lake water.
When the lake froze over, the syrup-transfer operation moved to a warehouse in Montreal. In the end, the thieves drained the barrels directly at the federation warehouse. In total, 9,571 barrels were surreptitiously emptied, representing more than half the “strategic syrup reserve” the federation maintained to keep prices stable.
It wasn’t until August 2012 that federation staff grew suspicious when they noticed some barrels were dirty and rusty. When the containers were tapped, some sounded emptier than others.
At his sentencing hearing, Caron testified that a federation employee was in on the theft. The employee was investigated by police but never charged, and Lacoursière did not refer to the employee in his ruling.
Caron also testified that unnamed members of the Montreal Mafia became involved, providing equipment and drivers to keep the scheme going in the spring of 2012. Lacoursière, however, concluded that there was no evidence the theft was carried out under the direction of a criminal organization.
Caron, 43, was sentenced to an additional year in prison and a $493,000 fine for an unrelated fraud against an insurance company. Taking into account time served since his arrest, Caron has three years and three months remaining in his sentence.
THE PERFECT ILLUSTRATION OF THE MAXIM, ‘OPPORTUNITY MAKES THE THIEF.’