The Pearson gold heist ringleader has been sentenced to four years in prison and must repay $22 million
Arsalan Chaudhary was sentenced yesterday after entering a guilty plea last month
The ringleader of what police called the largest gold heist in Canadian history has been sentenced to four years in prison, and ordered to repay $22 million to cash-handling services company Brinks.
Related: The Pearson gold heist ringleader kept a handwritten $10.3-million debt list
Ontario Court Justice Shannon McPherson delivered the sentence, which includes a restitution order that will last 40 years, in a Brampton courthouse yesterday. Arsalan Chaudhary, known as the mastermind of the heist, entered a guilty plea last month. His lawyer had pushed for the four-year sentence, while the Crown had argued he should serve seven. Chaudhary’s sentence will have 174 days deducted for time served.
In the 2023 gold heist at Pearson International Airport, Chaudhary and the others involved left the airport with 6,600 gold bars worth $22 million, as well as $2.5 million in cash.
“I find that Mr. Chaudhary was one of the organizers of the theft. He communicated with Air Canada employees to identify the shipment carrying the gold. Together with others, he arranged for a driver to collect and transport it,” McPherson read in her sentencing decision, according to the Toronto Sun. “Mr. Chaudhary travelled to the location where the gold was taken after the theft and then took possession of some of it. Mr. Chaudhary assisted in making the arrangements to have the gold melted down by a jeweller to disguise its origin and facilitated its sale.”
The judge said most of the stolen gold is still unaccounted for.
Related: An Air Canada employee tried to export drugs through an unsuspecting couple’s luggage
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
