Gold booty thief could get years behind bars
Deep inside the Royal Canadian Mint, Leston Lawrence once made metal bars. Now he’s going behind them.
Lawrence, 35, drew worldwide attention with an amazing caper to steal 22 gold “pucks” — almost certainly hidden in his rectum — during a three-month spree ending in March 2015.
He was convicted Nov. 9 of “secreting” the gold nuggets “on his person” and evading a sophisticated metal detector used to scan employees who work in the Mint’s refinery section on Sussex Drive. About $165,000 worth of gold was stolen — in round, seven-ounce pucks — most of it never recovered.
At a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Crown counsel David Friesen asked Ontario Justice Peter Doody to send Lawrence to the penitentiary for three years and demand repayment of $190,000, the estimated market value of the stolen gold.
“He has not repaid even $1,” said Friesen, arguing Lawrence has had two-and-a-half months to cough up at least some of the ill-gotten funds.
Defence lawyer Gary Barnes submitted that his client, who had no criminal record, should serve 18 months and only repay about $130,000, or the amount Lawrence earned by selling the gold to a buyer in the Westgate Shopping Mall.
Doody is to render a decision Feb. 2.
Much of Wednesday’s proceedings were taken up with Lawrence’s ability to repay the stolen booty.
Barnes told the court Lawrence put his home on the market Jan. 16 and has it conditionally sold for $319,900, with a closing date of March 31.
However, minus the agent’s commission and the remaining mortgage of $284,000, the sale would only net Lawrence about $20,000, court was told.
What of other funds? Barnes said Lawrence was attempting to collapse some RRSPs, sell his interest in a commercial fishing boat moored in southern waters and pull his money out of a Jamaican condo project. He also has an interest in a windshield repair business.
But, so far, none of this has transpired and Doody was left without estimates of how much each transaction might generate and what timelines were reasonable. (Lawrence is currently out of custody.)
Barnes had argued sentencing should be put off until mid-April, so Lawrence could sell some assets and repay the Mint.
The Crown disagreed — noting there had already been one delay — and pointed out Lawrence was not exactly acting with a great deal of haste for a man facing prison.
Doody agreed, denying the adjournment.
Friesen said Lawrence deserves a penitentiary term because there were aggravating factors: the breach of the public trust, the planning and deliberation involved, the repeated number of thefts, greed as the main motivator, the lack of demonstrable remorse, and the lack of restitution.
Barnes, however, questioned how much planning was really involved.
“It wasn’t really very hard,” said defence counsel. “It was not a sophisticated plan.”
At trial, court heard that Lawrence worked in a secure section of the Mint where gold bought from outside resellers was remelted and brought to the highest purity. Along the multistage process, Lawrence and others were required to dip special spoons into the molten metal soup, letting it harden into cylindrical pucks about the diameter of a golf ball.
The pucks were then tested for purity and, if not ready, returned to the molten pot.
It is these pucks that Lawrence was convicted of smuggling out of the refining area and down to his locker, where Vaseline and latex gloves were later seized. Like all workers in the secure area, he was required to pass under an archway metal detector at the end of his shift.
Lawrence set it off 28 times in 41 days between Dec. 15, 2014, and March 2, 2015. Often the readings were very high — the equivalent of having a concealed knife. Yet, on each occasion, he was cleared to leave after a secondary search with a hand-held wand.
The Mint, in fact, never even knew the gold was missing. It was Lawrence’s own sloppiness that was his undoing.
He was selling the gold at Ottawa Gold Buyers at Westgate, then depositing cheques in the $7,000 range at the Royal Bank in the same mall. An alert teller making a large deposit for him noticed he was a Mint employee. She alerted authorities and the RCMP were soon on the case.
In all, he was convicted of stealing 22 pucks; only five were recovered.
As he has throughout the proceedings, he showed little emotion Wednesday, even texting on his phone as his lawyer fought for leniency.
He learns his fate Groundhog Day. He will not, evidently, enjoy an early spring.