CAPITAL FACTS: THE GANG THAT STOLE MILLIONS AND STUMPED COPS

In celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, the Citizen is rolling out one fact each day for 150 days until July 1, highlighting the odd, the fascinating and the important bits of Ottawa history you might not know about. Four young Ottawa men spent half of the 1990s dropping from store ceilings right into store safes, raking in close to $5 million in more than 200 break-and-enters across the country. Kevin Grandmaison, Yves Bélanger, Tyler Wilson and Marc Flamini — known first as the 90210 Gang for their clean-cut Beverly Hills good looks and later as the Champagne Gang — would eventually each spend more than 20 months in jail for their crimes after five years of lavish living, bankrolled by their stolen money. The gang managed to stay undetected for so long because their crimes, back then, stumped police. The professional thieves would stake out one-level stores during the day — often drug or grocery stores — noting the locations of the alarms and manager’s office. They’d return at night, get onto the roof, dig above the manager’s office using a pick-axe and tin-snips, then drop into the room and access its safe. In a successful hit, alarms on doors and windows were never triggered. They were caught on Valentine’s Day 1996 after police followed them to a drug store in St. Catharines, Ont. Police had been surveilling them and listening to their phone conversations for months. Though the four only pleaded guilty to 54 break-and-enters, more than 150 cases, without enough evidence to prosecute, were closed by police who believed the gang had done those jobs, too.