He really was sitting on a gold mine.
Leston Lawrence, a Royal Canadian Mint worker convicted of stealing 22 gold “pucks” by smuggling them in his rectum, was sentenced to 30 months in prison Thursday, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
“I’d just like to say thank you, sir, and that’s it,” Lawrence, 35, told Ontario Justice Peter Doody, who also ordered the former mint refinery operator to pay a fine of $145,900. “No further comment.”
Lawrence was convicted in November of stealing the gold pieces, worth more than $127,000, during a three-month period beginning in late 2014 and then reselling them and spending the proceeds. Lawrence, a mint employee for seven years before he was fired in March 2015, was planning a new home in Jamaica and sent roughly $25,000 to a contractor in the Caribbean.
Lawrence also invested another $26,000 in a commercial fishing boat in Florida and sent wire payments out of Canada to himself and another man, while withdrawing more than $30,000 in cash, the newspaper reports.
While Lawrence’s smuggling method was never proven, Doody said he believed Lawrence must have hidden the gold pieces — roughly about as wide as a golf ball — in his rectum as he left work after his shifts. Vaseline and latex gloves were found in Lawrence’s locker, and he set off a metal detector inside the building 28 times in a span of 41 days, despite gold never being found on his body, the newspaper reports.
The weight of the laundered gold pieces ranged from 6.7 ounces to 9.3 ounces each and were sold for between $5,200 and $7,200 in 2014 and 2015, CBC News reports.
Doody acknowledged in court that the crime attracted headlines and was the focus of comedy skits around the globe — including by talk show host Stephen Colbert, who dubbed the man “Goldsphincter,” a play off the 1964 James Bond film “Goldfinger.”
“Mr. Lawrence has had his name and photograph displayed on the internet and in media around the world; this has undoubtedly given him a greater stigma and affected his reputation more than a conviction normally would have, and will make it more difficult for him to get employment in the future,” Doody said.
Mint officials — who at the time had no clue the gold was actually gone — were later so convinced of Lawrence’s smuggling method that they had another security employee duplicate the technique. The recreated heist set off the first detector but not a second test done with a hand-held device, the newspaper reports.
Gary Barnes, Lawrence’s attorney, told Doody he thought his client had handled all the unwanted attention surrounding his arrest “very well” and said Lawrence was trying to make restitution by selling his home. As of last month, however, nothing had been repaid, Barnes said.
Lawrence’s scheme was discovered in early 2015 when an alert teller noticed he was a mint employee while he was making a large deposit. She then alerted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Four stolen gold pieces later were found in his safe deposit box and they matched in size and shape those produced in a refinery process, the newspaper reports.