Traffic Stop Nabs Ocean’s 11 Wannabes

Law enforcement professionals just got a helpful reminder it’s never a good idea to shoot an unarmed man suspected of a crime in the back.

Moral reasons aside, there’s a chance a capture could lead to career-making collars in a multi-million dollar gold heist and/or international gun-smuggling ring.

Police announced the arrest of five Ontario men, including a jewelry store owner and two Air Canada employees, on roughly the one-year anniversary of the brass-ballsy robbery of nearly 900 pounds of gold from a hangar at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Three others are currently in the wind after a joint investigation between Canadian police and the ATF.

The busts came several months after yet another Ontario man, Durante King-Mclean, was pulled over in rural Pennsylvania for alleged erratic driving and illegal window tinting on his rented Nissan Sentra. Or — let’s be real here — just as likely for Driving While Black because surely the guy would’ve been obeying all the traffic laws since he was big time ridin’ dirty, not to mention you’d expect a certain level of professionalism from someone involved in such a Pink Pantheresque escapade.

While the guy didn’t give permission to search the trunk, cops apparently don’t need it if the car is a rental, and so he made a run for it before they found the dozens of illegal handguns stashed inside, according to the Tri-State Alert. Why a rental car would have illegal tinted windows remains a mystery, but that’s their story.

To paraphrase the late, great stickup man Omar Little, if you come for King-Mclean, you best not miss, and Keystone State troopers managed to not be the Keystone Cops on this one and caught him after a brief chase. They quickly learned he was a VERY wanted man in Canada as the alleged getaway driver of a robbery that made off with roughly $14.5 million worth of gold and nearly $2 million in cash, the largest heist in Canadian history. Even bigger than the time some sticky-fingered Quebecois stole several tonnes of maple syrup in a crime caper seemingly concocted in a lab to reinforce Canadian stereotypes Amazon now has under development as an upcoming comedy series.

(The largest emotional theft in Canadian history remains the Wayne Gretzky trade to Los Angeles.)

Pretty much everybody assumed it was an inside job, and one of the fugitives now on the run is Simran Preet Panesar, a former Air Canada warehouse manager with Keyser Söze-sized cojones who reportedly led a tour of the crime scene for investigators shortly afterwards.

Panesar quit his job FOR SOME REASON last summer and is presumably sitting on a beach in a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Canada. The other airline worker, Parmpal Sidhu, has been suspended from his job, as you’d expect, although — as someone who spent a year working for Air Canada after university — I know first-hand there aren’t many hills the Canadian Auto Workers union isn’t willing to die on when it comes to employees losing their jobs. A conviction for theft of well over $5000 would probably do it though.

All five have since been released on bail while King-Mclean remains in the clink.

Brink’s, the cash-handling experts who were supposed to pick up the delivery, has since sued the airline for the money lost in the heist, and its case has probably gotten a hell of a lot better with the arrests of two of the airline’s employees.

Police say King-Mclean rolled into the secure facility last April in a delivery truck, presented a forged copy of a document used for a seafood shipment the previous day, and then used a forklift to scoop up 900 pounds of bullion that came in on a flight from Switzerland (natch) before simply driving away. Nobody even noticed until the following day.

Police raided 37 different locations in both countries but so far have only turned up $430,000 in cash and six gold bracelets worth about $65,000, as well as several smelting pots, casts and moulds. The theory is the rest of it has been melted down into something untraceable and used to buy more guns. Or maybe to dispatch a troublesome Targaryen or two. Thug life isn’t easy in Canada given the country’s sensible gun laws, and the illegal firearms trade is big business in the criminal underworld, where a gun that would sell for $500 in the US is easily worth ten times that on the black market north of the border.

“This isn’t just about gold,” said police spokesman Nando Iannicca at the proud press conference announcing the arrests. “This is about how gold becomes guns.’’

Not literally of course because real life isn’t a John Woo movie. Or even a Tom Gormican movie. Although surely somebody is going to make one about this. Or at the very least an episode of the new ‘‘Law & Order’’ spinoff set in Toronto.

“In the Canadian criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important, groups: the Mounties, who always get their man, and the Crown, who will nail their ass on behalf of King Charles. These are their stories, eh.”

This has been a post about a massive theft, organized crime and actual gold that hasn’t included the name Donald J. Trump until now. You’re welcome.

[Tri-State Alert / CBC]