In Canada, the largest theft in history occurred between 2011 and 2012, with a robbery that lasted months for a total loot of around 19 million Canadian dollars, the equivalent of 16 million euros today. The stolen goods were not diamonds, gold bars or cash, but something much more typically Canadian, maple syrup.
This theft is known as The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist. and is the basis of The Sticky – The Big Theft, an American-Canadian comedy series coming to Prime Video. So let’s see what the true story is behind the robbery that inspired the TV series.
The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist
Since the 1960s, Quebec maple syrup producers have been united in a federation that regulates the market. To do this, among other things, the Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec, FPAQ for short, is responsible for maintaining a “strategic reserve”, a supply of maple syrup located in various warehouses in Quebec.
And it is precisely this stock that is the object of the great theft, carried out thanks to a “mole”, the husband of the owner of a warehouse. In practice, between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, 9,571 barrels of maple syrup were stolen. At first the thieves stole the barrels from their place, took them to a laboratory to empty them of syrup and fill them with water and brought them back to where they were.
Subsequently the thieves became less cautious, counting on the fact that FPAQ inspected its reserves only once a year, and so they began to empty the barrels directly on site and leave them empty. So, when inspector Michel Gauvreau went to check that everything was in order in July 2012, he climbed onto a pile of barrels and fell because most of them were empty. Later, police found hundreds of full barrels at a New Brunswick exporter.
The sentences to the perpetrators of the theft
Five people were later arrested, tried and convicted for this theft. Sébastien Jutras, a truck driver involved in transporting the stolen syrup, was sentenced to 8 months in prison. Avik Caron, the mole husband of the warehouse owner, was sentenced to 5 years in prison plus a fine of 1.2 million Canadian dollars. Étienne St-Pierre, the New Brunswick dealer, was sentenced for possession to two years in prison minus one day and three years’ probation.
The same sentence as St-Pierre was received by Raymond Vallières, father of the gang leader Richard Vallières, who in 2017 was sentenced to 8 years in prison plus a fine of 9.4 million Canadian dollars or the extension of the prison sentence up to 14 years In 2016 the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that the fine was excessive and reduced it to 1 million, but in 2022 the Supreme Court of Canada reinstated the original fine.
