The biggest gold heist in modern history is a runaway at the top. In 1976, thieves made off with 12,000 kilograms of gold worth more than $1 billion
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At the first anniversary of one of Canada’s most befuddling and high-profile crimes — the theft of 24 gold bars from Toronto’s Pearson airport — an international gold company ranked the hit as the sixth largest gold heist in the modern history of world crime.
The Canadian heist, in which gold bars weighing 400.19 kilograms arrived by plane from Switzerland but vanished from Toronto’s airport before it could be collected by its owners, was on April 17, 2023.
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As alarming and eye-catching as the theft is — a shipping container stuffed with gold bullion and cash apparently being picked up by an unknown and unauthorized person less than an hour after arriving at an Air Canada cargo facility on the edge of the airport property — it is far from the biggest gold heist in terms of the value of the loot.
The U.K.-based Gold Bullion Company has ranked the largest known modern gold heists from around the world, based on the value of each of ten major gold thefts, with all values converted to the current value of gold.
“Thanks to inherent value and limited traceability once it’s melted down, gold is one of the biggest targets for thieves,” a spokesperson for the company said.
The current gold valuations were based on the price of gold on March 22 using the company’s daily gold price charts. National Post has converted their values from British pounds to Canadian dollars.
The biggest gold heist in modern history is a runaway at the top, according to this valuation: the British Bank of the Middle East heist in Beirut on Jan. 20, 1976. This brute force attack saw a group linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization blasting through a wall of the bank during Lebanon’s civil war.
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This ranking put the loss at 12,000 kilograms of gold worth more than $1 billion — $1,143,870,142. That’s four times higher than the next biggest heist.
The second biggest gold heist is the Brink’s-MAT gold heist on Nov. 26, 1983, in London, England. It was a violent one. Six robbers broke into a warehouse near Heathrow airport with the help of a complicit security guard, poured gasoline on staff, and threatened them with a lit match until they opened the safes. They made off with 3,000 kilograms in 152 bars.
The lost gold is valued now at $285,967,535.
The third largest gold heist was also from an airport terminal, this one in Brazil, at the Guarulhos airport in São Paulo on July 25, 2019. During the working day, heavily armed men dressed as federal police officers raided a cargo warehouse. They held security guards hostage and made other airport employees load the gold onto two pickup trucks and then whisked it away.
The 748 kilograms of gold stolen is now valued at $71,341,979.
The heist ranked as the fourth largest seemed a far simpler affair — two men pulling nylon stockings over their heads before running into a gold and jewellery smelter in Miami, called Golden Door Jewelry Creations.
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The pair carted off 736 kilograms of gold now valued at $70,157,369
At number five is an inside job: the Sibanye Gold mine heist, west of Johannesburg, in South Africa, in 2013. Unusual for this list, this one led to mass arrests, including 20 miners, all employed by the company, and two former miners.
An estimated 500 kilos of stolen gold is valued at $47,661,255.
Next, at number six, is the Toronto Pearson heist. The company gives the current value of the 400 kilograms of missing gold at $38,135,486.
Number seven in the gold heist ranking is a job in April 1995 in Australia. It was far more intimate than most: believed to be a single safe cracker who hit a single victim, a wealthy Australian executive. The safe was in the Sydney office of media tycoon Kerry Packer.
The 285 kilograms of Packer’s lost gold is valued at $27,166,915.
Number eight is a raid — almost by robbers posing as police — on a fishing boat in Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island, in November 2012.
They stole gold bars weighing 216 kilograms, valued today at $20,589,663.
The number nine gold heist is an oldie. On May 15, 1855, three boxes of gold were stolen in transit on a train in Britain heading from London to the port at Folkestone. It was another inside job with a security guard one of four bandits. It is dubbed the Great Gold Robbery, although its greatness has since been greatly outshone.
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The 91 kilograms stolen is valued at $8,674,348 today.
The tenth biggest gold heist is deemed to be the Singapore Brink’s robbery on July 2, 2012. Two men stole 70 gold bars of one kilogram each. One was caught trying to flee the country soon afterwards.
That loss is valued at $6,672,575.
Most of the heists remain unsolved and little of the stolen gold from all the thefts was recovered, the company said.
“As precious metals are a liquid asset, making them very easy to buy and sell and universally accepted as currency, they make the perfect investment,” said Rick Kanda, managing director of The Gold Bullion Company. “However, this also makes them a potential target for thieves looking for a quick score, so keeping your gold and silver collections safe is essential.”
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