Ringleader of $22M Toronto airport gold heist gets four years in prison for his spectacularly simple plan

The ringleader of the spectacular Toronto Pearson Airport gold heist that made off with more than $22 million in gold and cash that had just arrived on a flight from Switzerland has been sentenced to four years for his daring snatch.

Arsalan Chaudhary, a 43-year-old man formerly of Mississauga, Ont., had already pleaded guilty for orchestrating the shockingly simple heist and was sentenced Wednesday afternoon in a Brampton, Ont., courtroom, with his parents and sister there to support him.

Chaudhary’s lawyer, Harval Bassi, asked for a four-year sentence minus time his client has spent in pretrial custody, while the Crown prosecutor, Jelena Vlacic, asked for seven years. Judge Shannon McPherson of the Ontario Court of Justice accepted four years minus 174 days (on a two-for-one basis) that Chaudhary spent in custody prior to sentencing.

He was also ordered to pay $22 million in restitution to Brink’s, an international secure transit company who was moving the cargo on behalf of two clients, the TD Bank in Toronto and a foreign exchange in Vancouver.

It’s a quirk of Canadian law that the sixth largest gold theft in modern history and the largest ever in Canada brings a charge of theft over $5,000, to which Chaudhary pleaded guilty to. In return, his other charges — two counts of possession of property obtained by crime, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence — were dropped.

The shipping container filled with almost-pure gold bars weighing 400.19 kilograms was stolen from an Air Canada cargo facility shortly after arriving on an Air Canada flight from Zurich, Switzerland, on April 17, 2023.

Even though the load was valued at $22.5 million, a driver showed up, presented an Air Canada waybill for a shipment of seafood that had already been picked up the day before, and have an Air Canada employee whirl the high-value container onto his truck by forklift.

The snatch was so smooth it wasn’t noticed until three hours later, when Brink’s security personnel arrived to collect the valuable container and Air Canada employees couldn’t find it.

Court earlier heard that Chaudhary spoke with the driver of the truck 50 times in the days leading to the heist.

And as the truck pulled out from the warehouse onto Britannia Road East, turning onto Dixie Road and then west on Highway 401, Chaudhary shadowed it, driving in tandem for about 50 kilometres, to Acton, Ont., where Chaudhary took some of the gold and the rest of it was delivered to a jeweller.

Alleged co-conspirators were anxious to get a piece of it, but Chaudhary urged patience, court heard, texting one partner who worked at the airport there was “too much heat” right now to melt down the gold and distribute the proceeds.

“We going to have to wait now. Melt gold is a process. LOL,” he wrote in his message, according to an agreed statement of fact read into the record. Police said the gold was melted in the basement of a Mississauga jewelry store and forged into crude gold bracelets that could no longer be forensically traced to the stolen gold bars, which had been individually imprinted with serial numbers.

That melting and forging process was complete 53 days later, when a text informed Chaudhary that their buyer “took all of it.”

“They got horny when they see it. Hahaha. They can’t let it go,” a co-conspirator messaged him. “The price dropped more today, but honoured yesterday’s price. They said it’s about to be a s–t show.”

Chaudhary was right about the heat. A gold heist electrifies any headline and news of the theft spread internationally as police poured resources into the case.

A huge break for investigators came when they discovered that the driver, who had covered his face, had removed a glove from his left hand during the pick-up, leaving behind a fingerprint on the paperwork.

Two handwritten “debt lists” — with nearly identical breakdowns of 18 entries for how the money from the sale of the gold was to be divvied up — were seized by police on Sept. 14, 2023. One of them was found at Chaudhary’s Mississauga apartment, where police also seized $154,000 in cash.

The list breaks down the intended recipients of approximately $10 million, suggesting that because of its illicit source the gold was sold for around half its value.

There was an unspecified “5M” taken off the top. Other portions were listed by initials, first names, nicknames, job description, or consumer items, including “boss,” “trucks,” “driver,” “supplies,” “Tommy,” “AR,” “K,” “P,” “safe spot,” “Dubai,” “condo,” “boat + slip,” “parents,” and “watch.”

It was soon too hot for Chaudhary, who told his family he was relocating to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, at the end of 2023.

On the first anniversary of the gold heist, Peel Regional Police held a dramatic press conference announcing the results of their probe, codenamed Project 24K. There were nine arrest warrants for suspects, five of whom had been arrested in Canada and one in the United States. Two of the suspects were Air Canada employees at the time of the heist, and one was a jewelry store owner.

Chaudhary couldn’t be found and was declared a wanted fugitive.

He returned to Canada in January from Dubai and surrendered to police who were expecting him at the same airport from where the gold had been taken.

The alleged driver of the truck, Durante King-Mclean, from Brampton, is in custody in the United States, after police stopped a car in Pennsylvania with 65 handguns in the trunk that were being smuggled into Canada. Authorities said a portion of the stolen gold proceeds was used to fund a cross-border gun-running plot. King-Mclean recently pleaded guilty to firearms trafficking-related charges in the United States

Two people remain fugitives.

Simran Preet Panesar, 33, from Brampton, is believed to be in India. He quit his job as a manager at the cargo warehouse where the gold was taken a few months after the heist and disappeared.

Prasath Paramalingam, 36, from Brampton, was arrested in the original sweep but later disappeared after his release. He is the subject of a bench warrant for arrest after failing to appear in court on Aug. 19, 2024. Paramalingam is also wanted in the United States in a related gun-running case.

Only a small portion of the gold has been recovered, seized by police in the form of six crudely made gold bracelets, worth about $90,000.

• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

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