Was Pearson heist an ‘inside job?’ Questions swirl with $20M in gold, goods stolen

Peel Regional Police is investigating how a container carrying the gold and other 'high-value' goods vanished from Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.

As Toronto-area police probe $20 million worth of stolen gold and other “high-value” items at Canada’s largest airport, experts say the heist has elements of an “inside job.”

Peel Regional Police, who investigate crime in the cities of Mississauga and Brampton, are probing how a container carrying the gold and other pricey goods vanished from Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.

The heist, which made international headlines Thursday, has the hallmarks of an inside job, said Stephen Schneider, a criminology professor at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

“It certainly sounds like something that was planned, premeditated and obviously required some level of organization not simply to access the gold, but to be able to remove it from the airport,” he told Global News.

“This is something that goes on at ports of entry all the time — the theft of the cargo — but very rarely is the value of the cargo this expensive or this valuable.”

According to Peel Regional Police Insp. Stephen Duivesteyn, an aircraft carrying the precious cargo landed at Pearson on Monday evening. Its cargo was transported to a holding facility where it was “removed by illegal means.”

“We’re looking at all angles on how this item was stolen, so I don’t really have a lot of details on how it was stolen to provide or any suspect,” Duivesteyn told reporters Thursday. He didn’t say which airline shipped the cargo, where the cargo was headed, or where the plane came from.

“We’re unable to provide specifics to this investigation because we’re three days in.”