Four 'gun smugglers' are arrested over Canada's biggest-ever $20M gold heist at Toronto Airport after secret year-long investigation dubbed 'Project 24K'

Police in Canada are promising a break-through in their long-running investigation into the country's biggest gold heist after four men were indicted in the US.

More than $20 million worth of gold bars were stolen from an Air Canada cargo depot at Toronto Pearson Airport in April 2023, just minutes after they landed from Switzerland.

Canadian police believe that the men arrested for a cross-border gun-smuggling ring were involved and will announce details at a press conference on Wednesday morning, a year to the day since the theft.

Durante King-Mclean, 25, Prasath Paramalingam, 34, and Archit Grover, 36, all from the Brampton district next to the airport have been arrested, along with Jalisa Edwards, 25, from Fort Lauderdale in Florida.

The 400 kilos of gold ingots along with nearly $2 million in cash were driven away from the airport after the thieves allegedly presented a false waybill to Air Canada staff.

The heist was ranked as the sixth largest gold heist in the history of world crime- and is believed to be the largest gold heist in Canada, according to the National Post. 

It was five months before the first arrest was made when police in Pennsylvania stopped a Nissan Sentra being driven by King-Mclean for suspected motor vehicle violations.

He tried to flee on foot when officers discovered he was in the US illegally, and a search of his car revealed 65 guns, including two fully-automatic weapons, they believe he wanted to smuggle back to Canada.

Police sources told the Canadian National Post that Paramalingam had been involved in the gun smuggling ring since the time of the heist, and allegedly helped arrange and pay for arrange for King-Mclean's entry into the United States.

The US Justice Department said King-Mclean obtained his weapons in Florida and Georgia, and traveled back towards Canada and through Franklin County.

'Grover and Edwards were charged by the grand jury as accessories after the fact for their alleged assistance to King-Mclean after his arrest to conceal evidence concerning his attempted gun smuggling, among other things,' a spokesman added.

Police in Canada established a joint task force dubbed Project 24k - short for 24 carats – in the aftermath of the heist but have revealed little about their investigation in the months since.

A spokesman for Peel Police said the 8.30am press conference would reveal 'details and arrests made concerning the theft of gold and cash from Pearson International Airport'.

The gold was being sent from Zurich by two Swiss banks — Raiffeisen and Valcambi - to a Canadian refinery when it was stolen.

Money management firm Brink's was hired by the banks to transport it and they sued Air Canada for negligence in October.

The lawsuit claims that the container was unloaded directly from the Air Canada plane onto a Brink's security truck on the airport tarmac before being taken to Cargo West, a supposedly secure warehouse on the edge of the airport.

Brinks claims that the thieves simply presented a waybill copied from a different consignment before being handed the container 42 minutes after the plane landed.

The airline claims that Brinks did not alert them to the value of the cargo, had no insurance, and did not pay for additional security.

The heist was even bigger than that at Montreal's Dorval International Airport when armed thieves ambushed a private jet and made off with $13.7 million worth of gold ingots and other valuables in 1990.

And it was the largest such crime since thieves posing as police officers pulled off a huge $30 million robbery in Brazil in 2019.

The suspects used fake police uniforms to enter Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo to target a trove of gold as it was being transported to New York and Zurich.

In the space of less than three minutes, eight armed men disguised as agents who had arrived in two fake police vans stole the gold without firing a shot.

The thieves took two security guards hostage and the family of one of them to force their help, according to police reports.

The cargo was heavy and the thieves decided to use airport employees and some trucks to get it into one of the vans before they fled.

Hours later, the hostages were released and the vehicles were located abandoned in Sao Paulo.

Police were able to track down three people and arrest them, all of them airport employees.