Fear not, breakfast lovers: Canadian police have reached a breakthrough in the great maple syrup heist of 2012.
Canadian police seized more than 600 barrels of maple syrup allegedly stolen from a factory in Quebec, Yahoo! News reports.
Last month, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers recorded a huge quantity of missing maple syrup after a routine inventory, according to the Associated Press. During the check, officials at the federation noted empty barrels at the St-Louis-de-Blandford site.
The Toronto Star reports that the stolen maple syrup was worth $30 million. Thieves were able to take it after they broke through locks and a fence at the industrial location and siphoned the syrup into their own barrels. The stolen gooey gold was enough to fill one and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools.
On Wednesday, Canadian police traced the sticky trail back to Kedjwick, New Brunswick, where they seized more than 600 barrels of maple syrup from exporter S.K. Export Inc. Etienne St-Pierre, owner of S.K. Export Inc., said he got the syrup from his usual suppliers, various small producers based in Quebec, according to the AP.
The Toronto Star reported that the amount of seized maple syrup barrels really amounted to somewhere between 700 and 800.
Sarto Landry, lawyer for the supplier, told the Toronto Star that his client buys syrup from all over Quebec to sell for a profit. He said his client bought the syrup at the usual price and had no reason to suspect it was part of the heist. “We can’t easily identify the syrup, it’s not like buying a car or buying a house,” Landry told the newspaper. “At the moment, there’s a presumption that the product that was bought. . . was in no way related to a deceitful transaction.”
Canada produces 80 percent of the world's maple syrup, of which 91 percent is produced in Quebec, according to Canada Pure Maple. Canadian maple syrup is exported to about 60 countries, and the U.S. is the main importer.