The Man Who Stole $4,000,000 From Airports For 13 Years Without Being Caught

place the biggest airport in Canada time late 80s and early 90s event years of continuous thefts without any evidence that may identify the criminals requirements take your seat get your popcorn and put your headphones ladies and gentlemen we are ready to take off Pearson the biggest International Airport in Canada Toronto the airport has the largest cargo terminals it receives shipments from all over the world millions of goods arrive every day it is a Non-Stop process all of the goods are stored in a large spacious facility in order to accommodate as many shipments as possible all

sorts of products were stored there you can find whatever comes to mind it's like a kid walking into a large toy store if someone has ever thought about stealing from this place he will surely get arrested as soon as he is out since the facility is protected by a force of more than 100 police officers however in the late 80s and early 90s the airport Administration discovered that many skids of high-end products were disappearing including cameras hard disks computers and many other products that were valuable at the time some worth up to a half million

dollars the police immediately formed a task force to discover how the thieves were bypassing the airport's heavy security and steel skids of goods without being noticed everything is secure on that perimeter there are video cameras everywhere and everyone can see them nearby there are also security guards they examine your tag first to ensure it is valid before granting you access it despite all these precautions cargo kept disappearing for years and police investigations were completely pointless they strongly attempted to put an end to this crime but ultimately proved ineffective the investigation procedure was so complicated for

many reasons mainly the late discovery of the stolen cargo by the airport Administration as I said before the facility was so huge and vast that no one could pay attention to what was missing a lot of shipments were in and out daily it was a massive undertaking to try and Trace the stolen cargo besides we are in the 90s there is no inventory storage system so the whole process was like looking for a needle in a haystack as a result the police were also informed too late which complicated their task they claimed that the police

received the call after a week the delay in informing the police meant that any evidence that could have been gathered at the scene would be disappeared the police had no leads and no clue where to start but the warehouse employees though the police couldn't get anything from them they were very cautious and careful in some of their replies those workers were like a family or a gang they know each other very well since they had been working together for a long time which means that even if the police thought about penetrating them it would the

thefts kept for years and the police felt powerless and incapable of preventing them the police actually came to the conclusion that an organized crime gang operating within the airport was responsible for the thefts they believed that such operations require a lot of work and time to be executed must know all of the ins and outs of the cargo operations they had to know people in security supervisors manage and truck drivers therefore all of these factors contributed to the belief that a large group of people who worked at the airport were robbing the cargo however the

police were wrong and in the end it turned out that the thefts were done by a single individual who was neither a director nor a supervisor so that he could know the ins and outs of the airport or have extensive knowledge of its operations the thefts were the work of a simple truck driver who had managed to find a way to bypass security and steal over seven million dollars in cargo and sell it worldwide how did he succeed in accomplishing it I know you are wondering too don't worry I got the answer but first lust

know who this man is truck driver's name is ho lamong he is a Vietnamese immigrant who came to Canada Toronto in the late 80s with fifty dollars in his pocket our guide was driven by the desire to become wealthy he was ready to give anything up to achieve his goal no matter the cost he began by integrating into the Asian Community he treated people with kindness which made it simple for him to make friends he was always smiling when he met people which created a great impression on others and helped him build a positive reputation

for which he earned the nickname Smiley after a short period of time Mr Smiley met with a woman who was a Vietnamese immigrant to her name is Teresa they had instant chemistry because they were in tune with one another which allowed them to quickly build a strong relationship and they married not long after Mr Smiley moved into Teresa's apartment and lived with her teenage stepson Benny Teresa worked for a shipping company where she had managed to find a job for her husband as a truck driver Mr Smiley's job was to pick up goods from the

Pearson Airport and deliver them to businesses throughout the city but this job paid only one thousand six hundred dollars per month which was a low salary for Mr Smiley to achieve his dream of becoming rich Mr Smiley used to deliver the goods himself which meant that he arrived at the shipping address got out of his truck took the goods and walked into the store giving him a good idea of the prices of the goods he delivered since the items he carried were highly valuable he knew that if he could just steal a few of them

and sell them he would undoubtedly become wealthy however considering that it was his duty to deliver the cargo he was unable to steal from it then he realized that entering the warehouse directly was the greatest place to steal coveredly he didn't have a pass that allows him to enter inside the warehouses which means that when he arrived at the airport he must present his ID card and his pass to the security guards this card must remain hanging around his neck throughout the time he spends inside the warehouse the pass he had restricted him to a

small area of the warehouse where he had to stand and wait for the workers to bring the goods before loading them into the truck himself so Mr Smiley found himself forced to get closer to the workers he already had a smooth relationship with him since he was always smiling from day one so he just needed to make it a bit stronger and he found that the right way to do that was by actually inviting them to dinners giving them gifts and so on Mr Smiley continued to strengthen his relationships with the workers attempting to create

a kind of networking in order to achieve his goal and one of the things he focused on was spotting the workers who needed money the most as well as those who had loans and bills to pay he was completely certain that this category of workers was an easy target one day while one of the workers was loading Mr Smiley's truck the latter approached him and asked if he could throw an extra skid of goods without telling anyone in exchange for two thousand dollars the worker was stunned it was attempting some of money for him and

he immediately accepted the deal because he knew they wouldn't discover the missing cargo for a long time and that it wouldn't be trackable Mr Smiley came back home and okcargo he got from the worker and found it full of electronics that worth up to one hundred thousand dollars we're talking about a successful investment here paid two thousand dollars to earn one hundred thousand dollars but the problem was that he needed buyers for his products so he began making connections with computer store owners and selling them the goods for reasonable prices of course prices that are

lower than the market another time Mr Smiley paid one of the workers again in order to let him load an extra skid of merchandise this time it was closed cargo which was of course worth less than the electronics but still profitable and he managed to sell it to some of his friends and contacts for a lower price as usual so things went on as usual his Network grew in terms of workers he bribed to assist him in his stealing operation as well as store owners or people to whom he sold his stolen goods and this

is where his Empire began to grow nevertheless he was still dealing with a huge problem because the stolen cargo was randomly chosen he had no idea about the products he stole whether they were Electronics clothes or something else that is to say each time he stole a cargo he got new products and was forced to look for new buyers that could buy them which made his retailing process a bit complicated to solve this problem he decided to work with their wife who was his accomplice in his thefts they both worked for the same company as

we mentioned before so his wife took advantage of her work Theresa had access to detailed information about incoming cargo he could tell him the flight that it came in on the amount that it's worth which area that it would be stored using the information from Theresa Mr Smiley carefully studied what cargo is going to which Warehouse he cross-referenced this to lists of employees he knew he could bribe this way his thefts became more organized which helped him sell the stolen goods easily sometimes they are sold before even being stolen in order to increase his profits

and expand his Empire Mr Smiley began targeting expensive cargo however the more cargo he stole the more issues he confronted because of the amount of stolen cargo it was vast and huge which made the delivering process difficult so he decided to add his steps in Benny to his accomplices Mr Smiley treated him as his son and so did Benny he respected him so much Benny took the distribution task of electronics and computer accessories and proved himself as an excellent salesman better than his stepfather he created his own connections with computer store owners to gain their

trust Benny used to present invoices and business cards bearing his Alias Joe Yang in order to appear to work for a legitimate shipping company that didn't exist so most of store owners believed that they were undoubtedly buying legal goods from a credible source despite Benny's ability to sell the stolen goods normally without problems and in a short period of time the Smileys were still facing storage issues because of the consecutive theft operations that led to the goods accumulation Mr Smiley needed a safe place where he could store his goods and because renting public storage space

was risky he bought two houses that were next to each other he lived in one and you the other as a storage facility every day the Smileys brought a cargo and stored it in their house neighbors would frequently see the Smileys coming and going with their cargo which seemed strange and unusual to them making them curious about what was going on around them Mr Smiley's Pleasant personality served as his currency he was a lovely person he always talked nice to his neighbors he respected them and so did they he even gave them gifts very often

and this way of treating people made him Beyond suspicion even if someone asked him why he had all those goods stored in his house he would simply tell him that he worked in the shipping industry and that he sometimes used his house as a warehouse his Empire was gradually expanding as were his distribution issues he had a supply and demand problem buyers were fewer than the goods he had so everything in his house was in Surplus fortunately at that time in the late 90s it was the beginning of Internet Revolution so a group of websites

appeared including eBay a website that can be used to sell or buy anything from anywhere in the world and provides the possibility of registering without an identity and without valid bank accounts and addresses all that mattered was buyer satisfaction regardless of how the product was made or where it came from that was not a priority only that the customer get what they were promised and be content with the purchase Mr Smiley took advantage of the website and started selling his stolen goods and with the prices he offered the sales flooded in not only from Canada

but from all over the world the Smileys started working on packaging and shipping from their house or Warehouse which made the selling process easier faster and more profitable Smileys were able to reach nineteen thousand sales thanks to eBay which increased their fortune and allowed them to keep their empire growing and active for 13 years this is unbelievable isn't it the thefts lasted for more than a decade without being noticed by the police or the airport Administration Mr Smiley considered the cargo workers the key to his operations so he insisted on letting them be satisfied by

gifts paying their bills staying by their sides whenever they needed help or simply by bribing them in this way he was able to make sure that these workers remained loyal to him and kept his operations running for more than 13 years the investigation into this case remained stuck even after intensifying their efforts by going undercover the police had not been able to identify the person who was responsible for those thefts during this time they only watched cargo being loaded onto tracks They had no way of knowing if it was being stolen or if it was

just routine business due to this state of uncertainty the police stayed powerless to narrow down their lists of suspects there were hundreds of warehouse workers which made their task nearly impossible and automatically Mr Smiley definitely stayed under the radar finally on November 2001 the police found their first lead when one of the computer store owners reported that someone had broken into his store and robbed him the police moved immediately and searched the store discovering that among the stolen items were hard drives police discovered that the hard drive serial numbers from the computer store theft matched

the numbers from the airport theft for the first time police have traced some of the stolen goods the police questioned the store owner about where he purchased those hard drives the store owners revealed that the hard drives had been purchased from a shipping company that was represented by someone named Joe and he gave them a phone number to contact him after checking the number the police discovered that it belonged to Benny and they immediately placed him under surveillance the surveillance helped the police so much it was quite intense and it led them to a lot

of facts they saw Benny collecting goods from their house and they saw a wall of goods when he opened the garage the police realized that they finally found the thief that they had been looking for years ago and then they found out that the owner of the house was Mr Smiley the police hold off on making an arrest until they have gathered sufficient evidence to build a strong case they wanted to find out how exactly he managed to steal such huge amount of goods during this long period a team of investigators was completely dedicated to

this task and they kept Mr Smiley under surveillance 24 hours a day seven days a week this provided the police with detailed information about how the thefts were carried out they followed him from the time he picked up his truck from the shipping company to the airport where he loaded his truck delivered the goods that were supposed to be delivered and took the stolen cargo to his house after all this the police were ready to make their move they broke into Smiley's house on December 13th to 2001 and arrested the entire family Mr Smiley his

wife Teresa and his stepson Benny the police were astonished by the quantity of items that were inside the house it was literally a warehouse in addition to the mass amount of cash it was in each corner of the house under the bed on the couch in Benny's room on the stairs everywhere they found up to 1.2 million dollars in cash Mr Smiley Teresa and Benny were arrested on the charge of possessing stolen property and before trial Mr Smiley agreed to plead guilty on the condition that Theresa and Benny had released because of his cooperation and

his confession that he was responsible for the entire operation and gave back over six million dollars in cash and property the police accepted the deal and Mr Smiley got a reduced sentence and served a two-year prison term now that we get to the end of the video if you like it don't forget to like And subscribe and activate the Bell button