$20 Million in Maple Syrup Was Stolen Over Couple Month Period

The United States has the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which can store up to 714 million barrels of oil at a time.

Canada? Canada has the Strategic Reserve of Maple Syrup (known formally as the International Strategic Reserve (ISR), which is the only such maple syrup reserve in the world. This reserve can store up to 133 million pounds of maple syrup at a time.

The Reserve, which is run by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, was created in an effort to stabilize maple syrup prices. All of the maple syrup producers in Quebec transfer 25% of their maple syrup crops to the reserve, where it will be stored for potentially a number of years.

The International Strategic Reserve is hosted at four different sites in small towns in Quebec.

Unlike Fort Knox or the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which have unbelievable levels of security, the ISR is lightly guarded. After all - who would want to steal maple syrup? The maple syrup is held in barrels in four different warehouses, with security guards watching the sites.

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While maple syrup certainly isn't as valuable as oil or gold, if you steal enough of it, you will walk away with a very good haul of money.

In 2011, the International Strategic Reserve had an overflow of maple syrup and needed to temporarily lease out an additional site to store barrels of maple syrup. The Federation of Maple Syrup Producers of Quebec settled on a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, which is a small town in central Quebec.

The warehouse had no cameras or alarms, and there was minimum security guard activity at the site.

This spelled opportunity for the enterprising thieves, who were thought to be Federation insiders.

The multi-month robbery started like this - the thieves gained access to the lightly guarded warehouse, where they moved barrels of maple syrup into a vehicle, presumably a van or a truck.

The barrels would be driven off-site, where the syrup would be siphoned out and replaced by water, and then returned to the warehouse.

At some point, the thieves got lazy. The Federation only inspected the barrels of maple syrup once per year, so why bother filling the returned barrels with water at all? The thieves decided to just return the barrels empty to the warehouse.

The thieves would break up the supply of maple syrup into small batches, where they would be sold to unsuspecting retailers in Canada and the United States.

It was the perfect crime, and over the course of just a few months, the thieves stole nearly 10,000 barrels worth of maple syrup, which was valued at nearly $20 million.

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How was the crime eventually found out?

In the summer of 2012, the Federation did their annual audit of their maple syrup supplies.

One of the inspectors, Michel Gauvreau, climbed up the mountain of maple syrup barrels in order to inspect them and nearly broke his neck.

Instead of standing on barrels filled with maple syrup (and not moving anywhere), the barrels swayed and buckled, as there was absolutely nothing in them.

The police were brought in to investigate and the culprits were soon arrested.

It turns out that the spouse of the person who owned the warehouse learned of the value of the maple syrup being stored and sought out others to concoct a plan to slowly siphon out the syrup and resell it on the open market.

A group of 17 people were involved, including truckers, planners and others.

The police acted quickly and the perpetrators were brought to justice. Jail sentences and heavy fines were given out.

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After the incident, the Federation made sure to top up their security measures at their various sites, and nothing similar has happened since.

Filed under: General Knowledge