Gold melted at jewelry shop, police say

Smelting pots, casts, moulds recovered from Toronto-area store believed to be linked to crime

Some of the gold stolen in the $20-million gold heist at Pearson Airport last year was melted down in the basement of a Toronto-area jewelry store, Peel police believe.

In a statement shared with the Star, a Peel Police spokesperson said they seized smelting pots, casts and moulds from the basement — equipment they believe was used to melt the stolen gold.

The spokesperson could not say how much gold was melted at the jewelry store. The gold bracelets recovered by police were found at a different location, the spokesperson said.

Six people have been arrested and Canada-wide warrants are out for three other suspects in the April 2023 heist, the largest gold theft in Canadian history and the sixth largest in the world. A van driver presented Air Canada staff at a the warehouse near Pearson airport with a doctored waybill and then drove away with 6,600 gold bars worth $20 million and the equivalent of $4 million in foreign cash.

Two Air Canada employees and a Toronto jewelry store owner are among those charged, police announced last week — the first major development in the previously unsolved heist.

Only $90,000 worth of the stolen gold — shaped into “six crudely-made gold bracelets” — has been recovered. Peel Deputy Chief Nick Milinovich said last week that “this investigation isn’t done.”

“Regarding the remaining gold, our opinion is that it likely has left the country,” Peel Police said in a statement shared with the Star on Tuesday. “It is difficult to trace the gold in other markets without additional information.”

Experts told the Star last week that the gold bars likely had serial numbers but once melted, any identification is gone forever.

“The chances of recovering it are virtually nil,” said Donna Hawrelko, president of the Canadian Gemmological Association.

And because the industry works on cash, trying to trace the gold may be difficult, said Anna Sergi, a criminology professor at the University of Essex in England.

Police believe the money from the gold heist was likely used to purchase illegal firearms.

In September, a driver from Brampton was pulled over in Pennsylvania with 65 firearms in a rented vehicle, and police believe those weapons were intended for sale on the black market in Canada.