Six Arrested in Canada’s Largest Gold Heist

Canadian and American officials on Wednesday announced the arrest of six suspects in a $16 million robbery that stands as Canada’s largest gold heist.

Three more suspects remain at large from the April 2023 crime.

Canada’s Peel Regional Police said the arrests were made after a joint investigation with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The ATF became involved because two of the suspects, 25-year-old Durante King-Mclean and 35-year-old Prasath Paramalingam, were involved in smuggling a large quantity of firearms.

King-Mclean was arrested during a traffic stop in rural Pennsylvania in September. When the arresting officers searched his rented car, they found 65 firearms, including two that had been modified for fully automatic fire and five “ghost guns” without serial numbers.

King-Mclean was in the United States illegally, allegedly with the help of Paramalingam, and was planning to return to Canada with his cargo of illegal weapons. Pennsylvania prosecutors charged Paramalingam with giving King-Mclean the money to purchase the firearms.

King-Mclean and Paramalingam both hail from Ontario. Before they hatched their gun-running scheme, they were allegedly involved in a brazen scheme to steal 400 kilograms of pure gold and millions of dollars in foreign currency from an Air Canada flight soon after it arrived from Zurich, Switzerland, on April 17, 2023. The ATF said the proceeds from the heist were used to finance the gun-running operation.

“This story is a sensational one, and one which probably, we jokingly say, belongs in a Netflix series,” said Peel Police Chief Nishan Duraiappah.

Canadian lead investigator Detective-Sergeant Mike Mavity said the key figures in the gold heist were two Air Canada employees, 54-year-old Parmpal Sidhu and 31-year-old Simran Preet Panesar, both from Brampton, Ontario. They helped the thieves simply drive up to an Air Canada warehouse at Toronto Pearson International Airport, gain entry with a forged airway bill, and drive off with the $16 million hoard of gold and cash soon after it arrived on a flight from Switzerland.

The forged airway bill was modeled from a legitimate document from a seafood shipment that arrived at Pearson a day before the gold, and it was, evidently, printed inside the Air Canada cargo facility, tipping off police that the robbery was an inside job.

The truck, loaded with 6,600 gold bars and a pile of cash, drove past several security cameras during the theft, both inside the airport and after departing, but police still lost track of the vehicle after it passed through the nearby town of Milton.

According to Duraiappah, King-Mclean was the driver of the truck. Another of the suspects taken into custody, 37-year-old Ali Raza, owns a jewelry store in Toronto.

Ammad Chaudhary and Amit Jalota were also arrested in connection with the case.

According to the New York Post, “Archit Grover has been charged in the US and wanted on charges in Canada” and “Arsalan Chaudhary has a warrant out for his arrest.”

Parmpal Sindhu is in custody, but the other inside man, Simran Preet Panesar, remains at large. Panesar actually remained at his job with Air Canada for months after the robbery and even gave police a tour of the facility at one point, which is the sort of detail Chief Duraiappah was talking about when he predicted the story would end up on Netflix at some point.

“This is a story about reverse alchemy. This is about how gold becomes guns,” quipped regional government chair Nando Iannicca.

“I don’t think I ever imagined they would have to deal with the largest gold heist in Canadian history. It’s almost out of an ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ movie or CSI,” said Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, where most of the suspects lived.

Brinks Canada, the company that was supposed to pick up the gold and currency from Pearson, subsequently sued Air Canada for negligence in losing the valuable cargo. Air Canada insisted it was not responsible for the theft and did nothing improper.

Detective-Sergeant Mavity said police believe the gold “has been melted down and reconstituted into local and international markets,” and the profits were “used to help finance the firearms” the gang was attempting to smuggle. There is also some documentary evidence that the gang might have been involved in drug trafficking.

Mavity said his task force executed 37 search warrants over the past year, recovering $430,000 in cash and “six pure gold bracelets worth about $89,000,” plus the equipment employed to melt the stolen gold.