Fire up the griddle! Stolen syrup recovered
There should be no problem covering these cakes now.
October 4th, 2012
06:55 PM ET

Fire up the griddle! Stolen syrup recovered

Pancake house patrons across North America, rejoice! Canadian authorities apparently have recovered a huge quantity of maple syrup stolen from a warehouse in August.

Quebec provincial police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police executed a search warrant last week at an export company in the province of New Brunswick, CNN affiliate CBC reported.

Etienne St.-Pierre, the export company's owner, told the CBC he bought the syrup from one of his regular suppliers, but police hauled it away in trucks. St.-Pierre's attorney, Sarto Landry, said St.-Pierre had no reason to believe the product was stolen, according to the Globe and Mail in Toronto.

“We can’t easily identify the syrup, it’s not like buying a car or buying a house,” he told the paper. “At the moment, there’s a presumption that the product that was bought ... was in no way related to a deceitful transaction.”

It's not known exactly how much syrup was stolen or how much was recovered, but the product originally stored in the Quebec warehouse where the theft occurred was worth more than $30 million, according to the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers.

“We know that it’s millions of dollars that was stolen,” the Globe and Mail quoted Quebec police Sgt. Richard Gagné as saying. “It’s a very large amount.”

The Globe and Mail said the amount seized was 119,000 liters, or about 31,400 gallons, but other Canadian news outlets gave different estimates. Police escorted a convoy of 16 trailer-loads of syrup from New Brunswick to a storage facility in Quebec, the Globe and Mail reported.

Quebec produces 70% to 80% of the world's maple syrup, according to the producers federation.

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Filed under: Canada • Crime • Food • Justice
soundoff (129 Responses)
  1. Mike Zerlin

    Has anyone questioned Aunt Jemima yet? Seem like an obvious place to start.

    October 6, 2012 at 5:30 pm | Report abuse |
    • liz_mk

      I bet Mrs. Butterworth tried to frame Aunt Jemima. Butterworth seems like the shady type.

      October 6, 2012 at 6:46 pm | Report abuse |
    • Salad Spinner

      No need to worry about Aunt Jemimah or Butterworthless....there is not one drop of maple in that crapola. It is total high fructose corn syrup.

      October 7, 2012 at 2:47 am | Report abuse |
    • Richard

      All those American syrups are FAKE crud.

      October 7, 2012 at 4:33 am | Report abuse |
    • Paul Canuck

      Have you not read the fine print on the back of the Aunt Jemimah label:

      "No maple trees were molested in the making of this syrup"

      October 7, 2012 at 8:34 am | Report abuse |
  2. magneticink

    ...there's only one thing worse in this universe and that's no Aunt Jemima at all...

    October 6, 2012 at 9:36 pm | Report abuse |
    • Mary

      Dangit! Now your making me hungry for a late night breakfast... 😉

      October 6, 2012 at 9:39 pm | Report abuse |
  3. Sammy

    Does anyone do math anymore? At wholesale of $25 per gallon it would have to be 1.2 MILLION gallons. A far cry from 31,000 gallons reported.

    October 6, 2012 at 9:46 pm | Report abuse |
    • Mary

      I like GRILLED sammies... how bout you? lol ... being silly

      October 6, 2012 at 9:49 pm | Report abuse |
    • Milky Pirate

      True, but I am sure that the wholesale value and what they told their insurance company are two very different numbers.

      October 6, 2012 at 10:26 pm | Report abuse |
    • PaleBlue

      Debate over the price per unit aside, they didn't confirm they'd recovered ALL off the syrup, just a very large amount of it. Perhaps there's still more out there to be recovered.

      October 7, 2012 at 1:06 am | Report abuse |
    • scott

      It's not like you could fence the whole 1.2 mil gallons at once.....they would have to pour it off a bit at a time.

      October 7, 2012 at 2:39 am | Report abuse |
  4. Mary

    That's it, I'm making waffles with maple syrup of course and 3 slices of pepperoni pizza.

    October 6, 2012 at 9:46 pm | Report abuse |
  5. Mary

    Follow me Troll ... Come on little troll ... follow me

    October 6, 2012 at 9:51 pm | Report abuse |
  6. Mary

    Keep on making a fool of yourself and I will.

    October 6, 2012 at 10:08 pm | Report abuse |
  7. explainist

    "Does anyone do math anymore? At wholesale of $25 per gallon it would have to be 1.2 MILLION gallons. A far cry from 31,000 gallons reported"

    street value is always retail, and heavily stepped on. $30 million price is those little packets you get in fast food joints and cut with pine sap

    October 6, 2012 at 10:32 pm | Report abuse |
  8. JM

    I'd love to hear what their fence said...

    October 6, 2012 at 11:53 pm | Report abuse |
  9. jesuguru

    The owner initially denied wrongdoing, but during police interrogation he later waffled.

    October 7, 2012 at 1:16 am | Report abuse |
  10. rrc

    like what is wrong with canada? Seriously.

    October 7, 2012 at 3:07 am | Report abuse |
    • Richard

      Aside from producing jobs at 5x the rate (per person) of the U.S. and not having as much debt, nothing.

      October 7, 2012 at 4:35 am | Report abuse |
  11. Jt_flyer

    I doubt you'll find real quality maple syrup in "pancake houses across American". 99% of the time it's flavored corn syrup.

    October 7, 2012 at 8:21 am | Report abuse |
  12. Solitairedog

    Canada is cool.

    October 8, 2012 at 9:58 am | Report abuse |
  13. Cindy

    They only found 31,000 ..... that's nothing. Let us know when the the more than one million that was stolen.

    October 18, 2012 at 8:59 pm | Report abuse |
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