When it comes to gold heists, especially multi-million-dollar ones, time is of the essence.
Once the deed is done, the robbers need to find someone to smelt the gold (or do it themselves, a difficult and time-intensive process), and then find someone else to buy it from them, all without arousing suspicion.
The police, meanwhile, need to track down the criminals before the gold is smelted. If past heists are anything to go by, once gold is smelted, it is nearly impossible to track down. Case in point: following the 1983 Brink’s-Mat heist, near London’s Heathrow Airport, the $200 million worth of stolen gold became so dispersed that if you have bought gold jewelry in Britain since the heist, it is likely to contain traces of the Brink’s-Mat loot. Despite a decades-long search by authorities, the bulk of the stolen gold was never recovered.
Yet in the days following the April 17, 2023, theft of 6,600 gold bars, today worth more than $40 million, from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Peel Regional Police were stumped. They had no idea who orchestrated the heist or who the inside men with knowledge of the gold shipment were.
All they had to go on was a single fingerprint linked to Durante King-Mclean, the then 25-year-old Canadian believed to be the getaway driver in the operation, who had taken his glove off to sign for the shipment on the day of the heist before disappearing with the gold. Canadian authorities had issued a warrant for his arrest, but they’d had no luck in tracking him down.
It took five months for Peel police to get their first big break in the case. On September 2, 2023, King-Mclean was pulled over by a state trooper for erratic driving in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. After examining King-Mclean’s license and registration papers, the trooper noticed that the agreement on his car, a Nissan Sentra rental, had expired, entitling the trooper to search the vehicle. In the trunk, he found 65 firearms, most of them handguns altered into fully automatic weapons capable of firing multiple rounds per second. King-Mclean attempted to flee the scene on foot but was quickly apprehended. Finally: the lead Peel police needed.
Federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania would soon determine that the weapons in King-Mclean’s car had been bought on the black market in Florida with cash linked to the Pearson-airport heist. The weapons were believed to have been destined for sale to Toronto-area criminal gangs.
Most importantly, Pennsylvania police quickly learned that an arrest warrant had been issued for King-Mclean in Canada, and they immediately notified Peel police. Canadian law-enforcement authorities are now in the process of potentially extraditing King-Mclean to face trial for his role in the Pearson-airport heist, where he would be expected to implicate his co-conspirators, who have become known as the “Brampton Gang.”
Brampton, a city of more than 750,000 located 27 miles from Toronto and, conveniently, only 15 miles from the Pearson airport, is home to many of the thousands of Air Canada workers the airline employs. It is also home to most of the alleged Pearson-airport gold thieves, who hail from the city’s tight-knit South Asian community. (“Many children of immigrant families fall victim to crime in Brampton … because of easy money and typically light sentences handed out,” says Nitin Chopra, an Ontario journalist living in Brampton.)
The Brampton Gang was ultimately undermined by that single fingerprint left by King-Mclean on the day of the heist. Once he was in custody following the Pennsylvania arrest, Peel police traced his text messages to Prasath Paramalingam, 36, a Brampton local who said he was leaving Portugal to bring King-Mclean money to pay for the weapons he’d bought in Florida. From there, the other members of the gang came to light.
A source close to the investigation tells me the Brampton Gang was assembled by Arsalan “Sonny” Chaudhary, 45, a former forklift driver at the Leclerc biscuit factory in Brampton, and his friend Simran Preet Panesar, 33, an Air Canada cargo-terminal supervisor from Brampton.
For at least six years, Panesar worked with Parmpal Sidhu, 56, a lower-level manager at the cargo terminal who is believed to be another member of the Brampton Gang. It was during this time that they became friends, and Panesar allegedly entrusted Sidhu with the details of the incoming gold shipment and relied on his help at the warehouse. Together, they allegedly became the heist’s inside men.
Chaudhary is also believed to have brought on board his younger brother, Ammad Chaudhary, 44, who allegedly worked with Paramalingam to help King-Mclean cross the U.S. border illegally following the heist. Two of the other men believed to have been involved in the robbery are Brampton locals Amit Jalota and his cousin Archit Grover, whose truck was used to collect the gold. According to Chopra, Jalota, Grover, and the Chaudharys were “all childhood friends.” (Grover also, allegedly, provided the connection to King-Mclean.)
Peel police had finally identified their suspects. Finding them and the loot was another story.
A text message sent by Arsalan Chaudhary to Ali Raza, owner of a Brampton jewelry shop who is believed to have smelted at least a portion of the gold bars, all stamped with serial numbers, into generic gold bullion, confirmed that the Brampton Gang successfully made off with the entire haul of 6,600 gold bars: “They took all of it,” he wrote. But Raza’s small, basement-level smelting facility would have had to have been running night and day for several weeks to melt all of the Pearson-airport gold. Likely, most of the gold was pre-sold to a foreign buyer and smuggled out of Canada in its original form to Dubai or India. (Raza is currently free on bail, awaiting trial for “possession of property––i.e., gold and cash––obtained by crime.”)
Following raids on the homes of several of the robbery suspects, Peel police discovered two notes, believed to have been handwritten by Chaudhary, which detailed the pre-arranged amounts that were to be paid to various participants in the robbery. Although Peel police would not officially confirm the identities of the suspects designated to receive their share of the proceeds from the heist, the source close to the investigation has confirmed the names of the primary beneficiaries.
At the top of the list was Chaudhary himself, who was allegedly due to receive $5 million, the largest share. Next in line was Panesar, slated to receive a $1.9 million “fee” for revealing the contents of the shipment and its E.T.A. at Pearson airport, as well as for helping execute the cargo-bay pickup. Then came a $1 million payout due to Sidhu, the other inside man. An unidentified co-conspirator got $200,000.
Another text exchange between Chaudhary and Panesar confirmed that the gold had been successfully sold for cash, and even revealed that a group of unknown buyers “honored yesterday’s price” despite a small decline in the price of gold. (Evidently, there is still honor among thieves.)
“It’s likely that as soon as the gold was in a secure site overseen by Chaudhary, a buyer was already waiting to pay upon delivery, take possession of the gold, and arrange to send it to Dubai or India,” the source close to the investigation told me. Dubai has long been known as the world’s principal hub for gold trafficking and money-laundering, while gold is a major part of India’s underground economy and is always in high demand from the public, making it an ideal dumping ground for smugglers.
Lead Peel-police investigator Detective Sergeant Mike Mavity confirmed the source’s statements to be true. In an interview with CBC, Canada’s national broadcaster, he added: In “Dubai or India, where you can take gold with serial numbers on it and they will still honor it and melt it down.... And we believe that happened very shortly after the incident.”
Peel police have so far made six arrests, including of King-Mclean, the getaway driver, and Raza, the jeweler. But the crime’s masterminds remain at large.
Chaudhary is believed to have fled to Dubai, which has quashed attempts at investigating the case domestically and does not have an extradition treaty with Canada.
Currently a fugitive from justice wanted on a Canada-wide warrant on charges of theft and conspiracy to commit an indictable offense, Panesar is now believed to be residing at his family compound in the city of Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab, in northern India.
One of the more sensational revelations to have emerged from the case is that Panesar, who likely originally tipped off Chaudhary to the shipment and planted the seed for the robbery, may have been motivated by a desire to finance his wife’s Bollywood ambitions. Panesar is married to the aspiring actress and singer Preety Panesar, who released a series of music videos under the Muzik Karma Records label while she and her husband were still living in Canada.
A few years ago, Panesar was hoping to produce a Bollywood movie, with his wife in the lead role, but it was never made. Nonetheless, she credits him with having launched her acting career, and last summer she told a Punjabi journalist that she was hoping to begin shooting a movie in India in September (although this project, too, has stalled).
More than a year later, Panesar is still supporting his wife’s Bollywood ambitions in Chandigarh, with no indication of a return to Canada. (Preety followed her husband to India when he fled.) “He should have been arrested before escaping to India,” said a security official who requested anonymity. “Investigators suspected him from the first moment he showed signs of nervousness when he was escorting police through the terminal. Subsequent arrests in the case were made with far less evidence.”
Sidhu, meanwhile, started posting photos of himself on Facebook and Instagram while staying at five-star resorts in Dubai (having flown business class on Emirates), as well as on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, following the robbery. He was arrested upon arriving in Toronto after returning from one of his lavish trips to Dubai early in 2024, and he is now free on bail and awaiting trial sometime early next year in Ontario.
Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, home to 5 of the 10 robbery suspects, has referred to the theft as worthy of an “Ocean’s … movie or an episode of C.S.I.” Despite the investigation being far from over, the robbery has already served as the inspiration for an episode of Law & Order Toronto.
This past May, King-Mclean pleaded guilty to arms trafficking in federal court in Pennsylvania, part of a plea deal in which prosecutors may allow him to be extradited to Canada and serve a 15-year sentence in the comparatively less harsh Ontario prison system, in exchange for which he will testify against his fellow Pearson-airport gold-heist conspirators. Ten men have been indicted thus far in the crime.
The source close to the investigation revealed that Peel police expect King-Mclean to name Chaudhary as the heist’s “top dog,” the term they used to describe him in the series of April 2024 indictments. The trial is expected to begin early in 2026.
But this still leaves open the question of whether Panesar was working with a third man inside Air Canada (in addition to Sidhu), who would have known when the gold shipment would take place, which flight it would be on, and what security arrangements were being taken.
“They had to have the waybill ready in advance, but we still don’t know right now if it was possible for Panesar to intercept messages from Zurich about an outgoing gold shipment being flown on Air Canada,” says the veteran, Canadian organized-crime reporter and Toronto Star journalist Peter Edwards.
Ironically, it was Panesar who gave Peel police a guided tour of the Air Canada cargo bay a few days after the robbery. Police described Panesar as “visibly almost ill, sweating,” while he explained the procedures involved in collecting and storing shipments. Yet it took so long for the police to connect Panesar with the crime that he had time to flee to India.
By all accounts, the investigation into the Pearson gold heist has stalled. Peel police have not issued any updates on the case since last year, and sources say that no progress has been made in extraditing Panesar from India. “This case is far from over,” says Edwards of the investigation, which has already cost Peel police upward of $3.8 million and is expected to rise to $7 million once the case, if ever, is closed.
“It’s frustrating,” he added, “because gold, once melted down, just isn’t traceable.”
Harold von Kursk is a Stockholm-based journalist and screenwriter
