Former Canadian Mint employee guilty of smuggling $165K of gold

The Royal Canadian Mint located in Ottawa. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

A former Royal Canadian Mint employee has been found guilty of smuggling $165,000 worth of gold from the Ottawa-based building, apparently in his rectum, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Leston Lawrence, 35, is said to have stolen 22 gold pucks by carrying them in his body cavity to evade metal detectors at the fortress-like building. He then proceeded to launder 18 of those nuggets via Ottawa Gold Buyers.

“His locker contained Vaseline and latex gloves, which could have been used to insert a puck into his rectum,” Justice Peter Doody said according to CBC News, adding that there were no cameras in the locker room.

Lawrence worked in the high-security area of the Mint where the raw precious metal is refined in a process that requires melting and chlorination. Gold is tested along the way by using a special dipping spoon that draws gold and cools it into puck-like cylinders that are examined for purity.

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