Police in Canada are investigating after an air cargo container containing nearly $15 million in gold and other valuables vanished from the Toronto Pearson international airport on Monday.
A large aircraft on the airport in the early evening had been unloaded, with its cargo transported to a holding facility, Peel Regional Police Inspector Stephen Duivesteyn said.
What happened to the precious cargo once it was loaded, according to Duivesteyn, who said it was removed somehow by illegal means. A short time later, he said, the cargo was reported missing to Peel Region Police and an investigation was launched.
It isn't clear exactly how much gold was inside the cargo container or what other valuables it held, but Duivesteyn said the total worth of its contents was just over $20 million, or about $14.8 million.
Duivesteyn did not expand on where the aircraft carrying the cargo had come from, or on its intended destination.
No suspects were identified as of early Friday.
The incident appears to represent one of Canada's biggest heists, but it is not the first to happen at one of the country's airports.
In 1990, another Canadian airport heist made headlines after armed thieves ambushed a private plane and made off with nearly $13.7 million in gold ingots and other valuables, according to past reporting from The Associated Press. At the time, it was considered one of Canada's largest robberies.
The heist, carried out at the Dorval International Airport outside Montreal, said at least four men, including one armed with a Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifle, used a stolen garbage truck to tear through a fence before stealing the goods in stolen vans. A pipe bomb had also exploded miles away from an airport construction trailer, in what police had called a diversion tactic at the time.
In 1952, a heist at Malton Airport, which led to the Toronto Pearson international airport, vanished gold bars valued at a total of $215,000 CAD at the time, the Toronto Star reported.
Monday's heist has drawn references to the so-called Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist of 2012, which stolen nearly 3,000 tons of syrup valued at $18.7 million from a storage facility in Quebec.