Toronto Pearson airport gold heist arrests include Air Canada staff

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The Toronto Pearson airport gold heist was such an inside job that the Air Canada manager who gave police investigators a tour of the crime scene at the cargo warehouse from where it was stolen is now wanted for the $24 million theft, along with another Air Canada employee who has been arrested.

Precisely one year after the brazen and baffling theft, Peel Regional Police announced nine arrest warrants as part of the gold heist.

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Five of the accused were arrested in Canada and have already been released from custody on conditions pending trial.

Four more are wanted in Canada, although one, the alleged driver of the truck used to cart off the gold from the airport, is in custody in the United States, where he was arrested after police stopped a car in Pennsylvania with 65 handguns in the trunk that were allegedly being smuggled into Canada.

Authorities said a portion of the proceeds from the stolen gold was used to fund a cross-border gun running plot, leading the chair of the Peel Police Services Board, Nando Iannicca, to say the case was about “reverse alchemy … how gold becomes guns.”

The gold has likely all been melted down, reforged into other forms, and made its way into local or international markets.

A tiny portion of what police believed is gold from the heist has been recovered. It had been forged into six crudely made gold bracelets, mimicking the look of cheap bangles. With the purity of the gold, they are worth about $90,000. Police seized smelting pots, casts, and metal molds believed to have been used to transform the missing gold.

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As well, $430,000 in Canadian currency, believed to be some of the profit from the sale of the gold, was recovered by police. The white five-ton truck allegedly used in the heist has also been seized and provided the backdrop for the police announcement, Wednesday, in Brampton.

Peel police officials outlined the heist and their investigation, a 17-person team codenamed Project 24K, the measurement for nearly pure gold.

The size of the heist plot is suggested by two versions of a “debt list” found by police during two different raids; police believe they outline those who received or were owed a portion of profits from the job. One was for $9,943,000 and the other for $10,023,000. It suggests the thieves sold the gold at half price.

There appears to be 18 names on both lists. The names are the same between the two, police said.

“We are working hard to identify each of these individuals,” said Detective Sergeant Mike Mavity, major case manager for Project 24K.

The lists allocate money for supplies, travel and personal items, he said.

Among those allegedly involved are two who were Air Canada employees at the time of the heist, and a jewelry store owner.

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Mavity said it was an inside job: “Because of their position within Air Canada in my opinion, yeh, they needed people inside Air Canada to facilitate this stuff.”

Intimate inside knowledge of Air Canada cargo operations, and access to Air Canada’s equipment to print a duplicate shipping waybill, made the heist seem absurdly easy.

That inside action, however, also tipped police off to possible suspects early in the investigation, police said.

Mavity said they learned that an Air Canada cargo manager, who had earlier given investigators a tour of the crime scene, was resigning. That’s one clue of a possible insider. When investigators went to speak with him, he had disappeared, another strong clue.

“He resigned in the summer of last year. And then we have not been able to locate him since. We have an idea of where he is,” Mavity said.

Although it seemed an easy score, Nishan Duraiappah, Peel police chief, said the job was carefully planned and orchestrated by a large group of criminals.

Mavity summarized the investigation.

A shipping container filled with 6,600 variously sized bars of almost pure gold, weighing 400.19 kilograms, from a refinery in Zurich, Switzerland, arrived aboard a daily Air Canada flight to Toronto at 3:56 p.m., on April 17, 2023.

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The gold was valued at the time at more than $20 million. The shipping container also contained foreign currency worth about $2.5 million. The contents were being delivered by Brink’s on behalf of two clients.

It was taken to Air Canada’s cargo facility.

At 6:32 p.m., a man arrived at the warehouse driving a white, five-ton truck, reversed it into one of the many loading docks and went inside to talk to Air Canada warehouse staff. He had a waybill.

It was a real Air Canada waybill, but for a legitimate shipment of seafood that had been picked up the day before. The duplicate waybill was printed off within the Air Canada cargo facility, Mavity said.

“Once inside the warehouse, the suspect then provided it to an Air Canada cargo warehouse attendant. A short time later a forklift arrived with a container of gold and foreign currency and loaded it into the rear of the suspect’s truck.”

He then drove away.

It wasn’t until 9:30 p.m. that evening that Brink’s security personnel arrived expecting to collect the valuable container. Air Canada employees couldn’t find it, realized it was missing, and began an internal investigation, Mavity said.

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At 2:43 a.m., on April 18, 2023, Peel police were called and told of the theft.

Each gold bar had individual serial numbers.

Peel investigators went door-to-door over four weeks seeking video surveillance images to help track the truck, starting from the warehouse. The area around the airport is thick with businesses small and large.

Mavity said his team managed to track the truck leaving through Peel region onto Highway 401, heading west. It exited the highway at Bronte Road and headed north on Bronte, in Oakville.

Once the truck reached Milton, the area becomes more rural with little video coverage.

“We lose sight of the truck,” he said but it was later recovered.

Over the year, Project 24K investigators executed 37 search warrants, 70 production orders, and interviewed more than 50 people.

One of the first on their radar was the alleged driver, Durante King-Mclean, 25, of Brampton.

“Through a forensic identification and other police techniques we identified King-Mclean as the driver early in the investigation,” Mavity said.

For months police quietly searched but couldn’t find him. They didn’t know he was in the United States.

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As luck would have it, on Sept. 2, 2023, a Pennsylvania state trooper pulled over the driver of a Nissan Sentra that seemed to be driving erratically and had windshields tinted too dark, near the town of Shippensburg, about 150 kilometres northwest of Washington, D.C.

Police say the driver ran away but was arrested shortly after. He appeared to be illegally in the United States. When they checked him on the police database, it flagged him as wanted by Peel police.

When troopers opened the Nissan’s trunk, they didn’t find gold bars, but 65 guns instead, that were destined to be smuggled into Canada, an indictment filed in the U.S. alleges. Two were fully automatic, 11 had been stolen, and one had an obliterated serial number, U.S. officials said.

U.S. investigators say they found messages between King-Mclean and another man from Brampton, Prasath Paramalingam, 35, from about a week or so after the gold heist discussing King-Mclean illegally crossing the border to get guns and bring them back to Canada. They used Threema, an encrypted messaging app, and Instagram.

Paramalingam told King-Mclean he is going to leave Portugal early to get cash for him. The next day he sent King-Mclean a photograph of large amounts of Canadian currency wrapped in stacks with rubber bands, the indictment says.

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Paramalingam and another unnamed person from Toronto flew from Toronto to New York City to deliver money to King-Mclean. Five days later, Paramalingam flew back to Toronto via Miami.

While King-Mclean stayed at an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale, he allegedly took several photos with his phone of guns and large amounts of U.S. currency. He left Florida in August 2023 in a rental vehicle and drove north.

That’s when he was stopped by state troopers.

Nine people have been identified or charged in their probe.

The five arrested in Canada are: Parmpal Sidhu, 54, of Brampton who was named as an Air Canada employee. He is charged with theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence; Amit Jalota, 40, from Oakville, charged with possession of property obtained by crime, theft over $5,000, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence; Ammad Chaudhary, 43, from Georgetown, charged with accessory after the fact; Ali Raza, a 37-year-old jewelry store owner from Toronto, charged with possession of property obtained by crime; and Paramalingam, charged with accessory after the fact.

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Paramalingam also faces charges in the United States of conspiracy to traffic in firearms and attempting to unlawfully export firearms. The United States is seeking his extradition, said Ben Benson with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, known as the ATF.

King-Mclean, the alleged driver, is formally listed as wanted by Peel police, although he is in custody in the United States.

Peel police are also searching for three other men.

– Simran Preet Panesar, a 31-year-old Brampton man who was an Air Canada employee at the time of the theft but resigned after the heist. He is wanted for theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

– Archit Grover, 36, from Brampton who is considered a fugitive in Canada and the United States. In Canada he is wanted for theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. In the U.S. he is accused of helping King-Mclean after his roadside arrest and hindering the investigation, including removing possible evidence from the Airbnb that King-Mclean stayed at and arranging a $1,000 payment to the car rental agency for an amended rental agreement.

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– Arsalan Chaudhary, 42, from Mississauga, wanted for theft over $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime and conspiracy to commit and indictable offence.

Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada confirmed that two of those suspected in the heist worked for Air Canada’s cargo division at the time.

“One left the company prior to the arrests announced today and the second has been suspended,” he said. “We thank the police for their diligent efforts in investigating this matter. As this is now before the courts, we are limited in our ability to comment further.”

Kelly McNeff, a spokeswoman for Brink’s, said the company wouldn’t comment on the alleged inside job at Air Canada because Brink’s is suing the airline for negligence in the theft.

“We are pleased to know the identities and to hear of the arrests of the individuals,” she said. She thanked police for their diligence and said the company would continue to cooperate in any investigation.

Police said the investigation continues.

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