Inside the plot behind $22M Pearson gold heist, as revealed in court testimony and police wiretaps - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out By Adrian Humphreys November 3, 2026 at 6:30 a.m. Last Updated: November 3, 2026 at 9:25 a.m. The Toronto airport gold heist plot allegedly began with a secretive introduction of two strangers by a mutual friend who knew each of them had something the other needed if either was to pull off what would be one of the world’s largest gold thefts.

Simran Preet Panesar worked as a supervisor with Air Canada. He was a personable and well-liked man in the airline’s huge cargo warehouse at Pearson international airport. He was 30, married and living in a new-build townhouse in an affluent Brampton neighbourhood.

The man he was allegedly meeting for the first time at this rendezvous was Arsalan Chaudhary, a failed restaurateur known by the nickname Sonny. He was 41, single and living in the penthouse of a high-rise condo in downtown Mississauga.

Their meeting, Chaudhary claimed in court at a trial still underway, was about only one thing: planning an epic heist.

It was “strictly business,” Chaudhary said.

“We were just talking about doing the heist…. Panesar had a great idea and he said it will work.”

Chaudhary admitted he helped plan the heist and has been spilling his side of the story at various court proceedings, including some behind closed doors. One trial is ongoing, others haven’t begun, and not everything he said is proven, but combined with other information, including wiretaps, court testimony and police records, it helps build one picture of the gold heist unfolding and what happened next.

Panesar had been watching cargo come and go at the airport for years. He knew the security of Air Canada’s system and how to defeat it, according to Chaudhary. He knew how cargo moved through the airport and how to manipulate it. He knew the weaknesses of the staff and how to exploit them.

He knew everything about the inside half of a cargo heist. He just needed someone who could do the rest. For that, Panesar was introduced to Chaudhary about six months before the spectacular heist, according to Chaudhary.

“Someone referred him to me,” Chaudhary said, sealing what is still a secret. “They trusted me, and I had certain people that I knew who I could talk to and get the job done.” While that sounds like the introduction to a man of underworld renown, if Chaudhary was a criminal mastermind, he hid it well.

Born in Pakistan, he immigrated to the United States with his family when he was three years old and relocated to Canada a decade later, where he became a citizen. He dropped out of high school and worked for a moving company, as a dump truck driver, and did a stint in the duty-free shop at Pearson airport. He opened a restaurant with his brother just before the pandemic that swept away their business.

Chaudhary had a short criminal record: He was convicted in 2018 of possessing or trafficking in credit card data and possessing property obtained by crime. He received a suspended sentence and never spent a day in jail.

At the meeting, Panesar pitched a high-value heist, Chaudhary claimed. He was skeptical, but Panesar mapped it out and made it sound like it just might work.

“It was COVID. I was out of a job, kind of struggling. This topic came up. We started talking about it. I didn’t take it seriously in the beginning, but eventually, it got serious,” he said. “He knew how to get the gold out, and I told them I’ll take care of the rest…. Meaning, once it’s out, I’ll move it and put it where it’s supposed to go.”

They agreed to split the loot 70-30, with the larger share going to Panesar, Chaudhary said. He settled for that because Panesar said he had to take care of others out of his cut, and Chaudhary realized he needed Panesar more than Panesar needed him.

“Without people working inside, I couldn’t make this happen,” he said. “He was the leading guy.”

Pulling others in along the way, authorities allege, the pair forged the two loose ends of a conspiracy leading to the astonishing theft of a shipping crate shortly after it arrived on an Air Canada flight from Switzerland, carrying 400 kilograms of almost pure gold and foreign currency worth about $2.8 million. Together the contents of the crate were officially valued at more than $22.5 million, but likely worth much more, making it Canada’s largest gold heist.

“I pretty much planned the whole thing with Mr. Panesar,” Chaudhary said. Panesar, however, is not in Canada and has not answered to the allegations in court. His lawyer said Panesar disputes the allegations and intends to fight his charges.

Nobody moves more air cargo into Canada than Air Canada, and nowhere in the country is more air cargo coming and going than at the airline’s main hub in Toronto, Canada’s largest and busiest airport. When an Air Canada jet lands at Pearson it carries passengers in its seats and cargo in its belly.

Evidence at the ongoing trial for a former Air Canada employee who worked underneath Panesar suggests a gold heist was bound to happen sooner or later, or something similar. Security at the cargo warehouse was dreadful. Employee text messages suggest a similar exploit had already been used to steal less noticeable items. So what would happen when someone spotted a load too tempting to resist?

Someone with knowledge of Air Canada’s procedures, and the credentials to access its computer systems, could easily identify a target shipment that carried something worth stealing and then manipulate the computer-automated sorting system to perform something of a shell game, making a high-value crate that required tight security be treated like a normal box nobody particularly notices.

That would be the inside work of the gold heist, and prosecutors and police allege this was Panesar’s domain.

For the heist to be consummated, however, Chaudhary needed to trigger his side of things, the outside work. Until he did, the gold wouldn’t go anywhere.

“I had to get all my resources together and get everyone together and see who’s going to do what for me,” Chaudhary said. It sounds like a chore, but it wasn’t a long list. He needed a truck. He needed a driver. He needed a place to take the gold after it was stolen. Later, he would need to find a way to melt and sell the gold and launder the cash, but he didn’t work that part out until afterwards.

Chaudhary said he turned first to Archit Grover. Nicknamed Archie or Grove, he was 36, also from Brampton, and Chaudhary’s long-time pal. Grover owned a modest trucking company and Chaudhary asked if he could use one of his trucks. Grover didn’t know it was for a heist, Chaudhary said. “I just told him I had a shipment I have to pick up, if you could help me out with that. I have an air waybill. Everything will be legit. I’ll just let you know when. He goes, ‘yeah, no problem.’”

Chaudhary also asked Grover for a driver. He recommended Durante King-Mclean, a 25-year-old from Brampton, Chaudhary said. Grover had been King-Mclean’s landlord and employer.

“The driver knew least amount of knowledge possible that I could tell him because this was a big job,” Chaudhary said. “Money like that … you don’t know what the person’s going to do.” In other words, he was afraid that if King-Mclean knew the value of the crate he would have in the truck, he might just keep on driving.

Finally, Chaudhary arranged for a quiet spot where the loot could be taken off the truck and divided. He settled on a farm near Acton, Ont., a 50-minute drive west of the airport.

“It was through a friend who I knew that said I could do something over there. It was, like, they had a little shed there that I could pay him to rent.… I just needed a shed to move the gold from one truck to another.… and I paid him, like a hundred bucks.” Prasath Paramalingam, 34, another friend from Brampton, helped him rent it, he said.

By late March Chaudhary had arranged for the truck, the driver and the destination. He just needed to wait until his inside man found an irresistible target.

That came on April 17, 2023, when heavy incoming air freight from a precious metal refinery in Zurich was destined for Toronto. News of that shipment ignited hundreds of phone calls, group chats, texts and encrypted messages firing back and forth.

“Gooooood morning it is,” an early-morning text that day pinged on the phone of Parmpal Sidhu, a 53-year-old Air Canada cargo employee known as Paul who worked under Panesar but was also his friend. The text was from Panesar’s phone, court heard. It was followed by, “We looking good anyways for today.”

On the day of the heist, Chaudhary set up at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel, just four kilometres from the airport.

Phone records show Chaudhary was in contact with King-Mclean 16 times that day, with Panesar eight times, with Grover seven times, with Grover’s trucking business twice, with Sidhu three times, and with Paramalingam once.

As the Air Canada plane was over the Atlantic, from inside the large Air Canada facility a series of computer transactions discreetly changed the instructions for what the airline’s automated cargo sorting system was to do with that crate of gold. The login credentials of an Air Canada manager were used to delete a code flagging the crate as a high-value shipment. That meant that when it arrived, instead of being sent to a locked and guarded storage room it was treated as general cargo.

Under the login credentials for a different Air Canada manager the computer was then told the crate was not to be unpacked by cargo staff and divided for its two customers — TD Bank collecting the gold and a Vancouver foreign exchange picking up the currency — but kept intact instead. That meant no one would open the crate to see its contents, and the gold and the cash would be kept together for the heist.

Court heard that the two managers whose credentials were used were not working that day and were not involved in the heist. At the time, Air Canada’s computer security at the warehouse was poor, with login credentials routinely shared among employees.

The flight touched down in Toronto nine minutes early, shortly before 4 p.m.

Chaudhary said that Panesar gave him a legitimate Air Canada air waybill that had been carefully doctored to allow a customer to collect the targeted crate, and Chaudhary gave it to King-Mclean. Court heard that Sidhu’s log-in credentials were used to print it off.

The cargo automation faultlessly followed its new instructions and the crate of gold moved unnoticed around the warehouse on a device like an enormous baggage carousel, taking it where the new codes told it to and dropping it into a cavernous sorting area known as a pit.

At 6:30 p.m., King-Mclean backed a white truck into loading bay 12 at Air Canada’s cargo warehouse on Brittania Road East. The heist was truly underway.

Wearing a facemask, hat, gloves, work boots and a safety vest, King-Mclean handed the doctored waybill to an Air Canada employee who passed it to cargo handlers to retrieve the crate. The driver paced about waiting before moving into the loading bay to open the back of his truck.

John Iheme, a station attendant at the warehouse, went to help the waiting customer. He said he was unaware of the heist plot and didn’t know of his unwitting role until Peel Regional Police investigators showed him internal security video showing their interaction, he said. Iheme greeted the driver with a fist bump, after which King-Mclean removed the heavy-duty work glove from his right hand.

Iheme found the crate matching the number written on the waybill in the pit. He loaded it onto a forklift, whirled it out to the waiting driver and even helped King-Mclean load it onto the truck. The driver gave Iheme an appreciative fist bump before climbing back behind the wheel and driving off.

Chaudhary had told King-Mclean to head west and then north to get to the farm he had arranged. Chaudhary drove close to the truck all the way.

Nobody involved in the heist knew exactly what they had stolen.

The shipping manifest said it was high-value goods, provided the weight of the crate and said it contained gold and currency but didn’t specify much else. No one knew how much of the weight was gold or how pure it was.

They didn’t learn how successful their heist was until they met at the farm and opened the crate.

It is hard to imagine there wasn’t a moment of dumbfounded ecstasy.

Inside they saw thousands of small strips or bars of gold — not the brick-sized gold ingots seen in movies. Chaudhary called them biscuits. Each was stamped with the TD logo of the Toronto Dominion Bank and a serial number. Stacks of biscuits were inside hardshell boxes with a lid that pulled off, like old sewing machine cases, he said.

Chaudhary, Panesar and King-Mclean unloaded the boxes of gold and cash and divided it between the two masterminds, Chaudhary alleged. They did a rough split by eyeball rather than counting individual biscuits and bills. Chaudhary said he trusted Panesar to make sure he got a full 30 per cent.

“He trusted me with everything, so I had to trust him with something. Without trust, we couldn’t make this happen,” Chaudhary said. He loaded his cut into his Range Rover.

By 9:30 p.m., when armed Brink’s guards arrived at the Air Canada warehouse expecting to pick up a crate of gold, the crooks were unloading the loot 50 kilometres away.

By 10 p.m., as Air Canada staff were searching for the crate with increasing alarm, the crooks were leaving the farm and going their separate ways. Chaudhary headed to a condo he rented for a stash house so his loot wasn’t stored where he slept.

“The plan was to basically clear the gold out, melt it, get the money, pay everyone out … everyone will be quiet about it because everyone got paid, and that’s it. Normal life, pretty much,” Chaudhary said.

The endgame proved the diciest part of the heist.

“I knew I needed help to melt the gold,” Chaudhary said.

Chaudhary had made many trips back to Pakistan over the years, and he got to know a man there named Ibrahim who had connections. He’d known him for about 12 years. Chaudhary asked Ibrahim if he could get him gold melting machines. Ibrahim, who was in Pakistan, arranged for him to meet with someone in Canada who got him the equipment, Chaudhary said. He started melting gold in his condo after watching how-to videos on YouTube.

“It’s not brain surgery. It’s pretty simple: Put it on, heat it up, put it in there. It melts,” he said. Melting it destroyed the logos and serial numbers. “No one could tell where it came from.”

Chaudhary said he reached out to another friend, this one in Canada, to help him sell the reforged gold. He had been close friends with 39-year-old Amit Jalota for at least 15 years. Jalota was an actuary and made good money.

“He had some contacts,” Chaudhary said. “I made up a story… and asked him if he could get it exchanged for some cash for me. He’s a friend, so I didn’t really have to tell him a lot.”

Chaudhary gave gold to Jalota in increments — about three of his forged bars at a time — and Jalota took the gold to Ali Raza court heard. Raza was the 36-year-old proprietor of Mashallah Jewellers, a store near the airport in a retail hub catering to South Asian and Middle Eastern interest in gold. It was an easy sale.

“They took all of it,” Jalota texted Chaudhary on June 9, 2023. “They get horny when they see it hahahah. They can’t let it go.”

“I didn’t know who Ali Raza was. It was not my person,” Chaudhary said. “Only time I find out who Mr. Raza was when the newspapers came out,” with news of arrests for the heist.

Chaudhary said he got more than a million in cash back.

“I knew the money couldn’t stay in this country,” he said.

He turned again to Ibrahim in Pakistan. Ibrahim helped him transfer the money out of Canada and into Pakistan using underground banking, or, as Chaudhary called the service, “Ibrahim’s guy.” Chaudhary then flew to Pakistan to collect it. “I give the guy money (in) Canada and receive it in Pakistan.”

Chaudhary thought he had found the key to unlocking the cash value trapped in his stolen gold without drawing attention from police in Canada.

While Chaudhary was still in Pakistan, however, Ibrahim figured out what he was up to — wanting gold melting machines and then help to move huge sums of cash all while the Toronto airport gold heist made headlines around the world was a giveaway. Chaudhary said he was betrayed.

“All of a sudden, I was kidnapped,” Chaudhary said. “I was kidnapped by the police over there.… They blindfolded me, and they took me to a place that I don’t know where I was. And they told me they would torture me, do things with me, leave my body where no one will ever find me again, and it’ll be the last time I see anyone.

“They told me that they wouldn’t let me go until they had everything,” he said. “What’s the point of all this money when you can’t even live.”

His kidnappers connected him on FaceTime video calls to their colleagues in Canada; Chaudhary told them where to go to scoop up the rest of his hidden gold, and then to a family member’s home to take his cash.

“They held me until they grabbed everything.” Once his kidnappers’ colleagues in Canada had their hands on the loot they blindfolded him again and drove him into town, told him to lie on the road and count to 30 before looking up. When he took off his blindfold, they were gone.

He thinks they stole at least $5 million worth of gold and a million or more in cash, and left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Trust me, it’s a movie, but it’s a horrifying movie to me,” he said. “It’s a very scary experience for me.”

He flew back home to Canada as soon as he could.

There he faced a different problem. The driver, King-Mclean, was the most likely to be linked to the heist because of the video surveillance. He had also left fingerprints behind after he took his glove off at the warehouse. Police were looking for him.

In June 2023, around the time he was melting gold, Chaudhary’s older brother, Ahmad, booked an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where King-Mclean went to hide. Chaudhary said his brother had no knowledge of the purpose for the booking. The rental expired in late August 2023.

On Sept. 2, 2023, a Pennsylvania state trooper pulled over a Nissan Sentra heading north. When troopers opened the trunk, they found 65 guns destined for Canada, and the driver was arrested. It was King-Mclean coming home.

Chaudhary was rattled by the arrest and asked Grover to pass a message to King-Mclean: “Make sure he knows I got him,” a text message said. “Tell him to keep quiet or lawyer can’t do his job.” He sent $25,000 to pay a lawyer handling his U.S. charges. Chaudhary hoped it would help him keep his mouth shut about the gold.

It was too late. Police had already pieced together much of the puzzle behind the baffling heist.

The day after the heist, Panesar had been assigned by the airline to be the liaison between the cargo facility and police investigators. When officers came to examine the scene of the crime, it was Panesar who gave them a tour.

Within a few months, he quit his job and moved to India with his wife. By the time he left he was already a suspect, but investigators were not ready to arrest him.

Police stepped up surveillance on other suspects.

On July 7, 2023, police watched Grover, Sidhu, and an unknown man have an hour-long discussion at the In and Out car wash in Brampton. This was around the time Panesar left for India.

If there was any doubt that police were onto them, it evaporated on Sept. 14, 2023. Officers with a special squad probing the heist arrived at Chaudhary’s condo with a warrant to search it. Inside they seized $154,000, some British pounds, United Arab Emirates dirhams, and a handwritten list outlining the distribution of $10 million.

On Nov. 13, 2023, police watched Chaudhary sitting in a Range Rover driven by Paramalingam as they pulled into a plaza in Brampton and parked. Grover walked up to their car and stood at the open side window for 50 minutes. Something was on their minds.

On Dec. 3, 2023, Chaudhary flew to Dubai.

The start of 2024 brought a new round of intense surveillance, with police wiretaps placed on suspects’ phones, in their homes, and in their cars. Among the thousands of intercepted calls and messages, police found some they believed were suspicious.

The wiretaps heard suspects trying to dodge surveillance, using code words, hiring lawyers and turning against each other, although context is not always certain on wiretaps.

“I’m telling you it is falling apart. It’s already fallen part,” Sidhu said in one call with an unidentified person on Feb. 3, 2024, court heard. “I’ve been trying to get you guys to do the right thing. Nobody is listening to me … now I’m the one who is getting all the f–king heat here.”

“Everybody’s on their own. Everybody’s worried about themselves,” he said in another call.

Almost a year after the heist, police started making arrests. The first to be pinched in Canada was Sidhu, who was arrested on April 5, 2024, although the public didn’t know.

By then, four suspects were beyond reach — Chaudhary in Dubai, Panesar and Grover in India, and King-Mclean in the United States, where he is serving a 13-year sentence for firearms trafficking. Five others were arrested in Canada: Sidhu, Jalota, Chaudhary’s brother, Raza, and Paramalingam.

Grover returned to Canada in May 2024 and Chaudhary this January. Both were arrested as they got off a plane at Pearson airport. Grover is scheduled for trial next year on charges of theft and conspiracy. He is also wanted in the United States in the gun-running case.

Chaudhary quickly agreed to plead guilty to theft, and this past April, a week before the third anniversary of the heist, he was sentenced to four years imprisonment. It was evidence by Chaudhary that led to charges against Jalota, Ammad Chaudhary, and Raza being withdrawn, because he insisted they had no knowledge of the heist.

At a large media conference called by Peel police on the first anniversary of the heist, it was announced that nine men were accused of involvement in the gold heist.

Paramalingam was arrested in the original sweep but disappeared after his release on bail. He is considered a fugitive. He is also wanted for the U.S. gun case.

Evidence and submissions wrapped up Monday at Sidhu’s trial in Brampton on theft and conspiracy charges. He is free on bail while he waits for a verdict.

Which leaves Panesar, the alleged mastermind.

Panesar is in India, authorities said, where India’s national finance police suspect he brought gold or cash from the heist into their country, documents allege. His lawyer in Canada, Greg Lafontaine, said the Indian investigation prevents his client from returning to Canada to face his charges. Panesar’s wife is a singer and actress, and in India they have been working on video and music productions.

If Chaudhary told the truth about Panesar driving off with the lion’s share of the loot, then what happened to that part of the gold is a story yet to be revealed.

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'We are very very clear. We are following the evidence as it becomes available,' said Chief Myron Demkiw on Monday