As the year draws to a close, we offer up our contribution to the raft of lists documenting the best and worst of 2012 by aggregating the nation’s wackiest thefts in map form.
While the Great Maple Syrup Heist captured the country’s attention in the fall, there has been no shortage of additional idiosyncratic crimes executed over the course of the year. These range in scale (and strangeness) from a heist of $2 million in toys from the Salvation Army’s Toronto warehouse down a $1 bag of barbecue chips, allegedly plucked from an open Victoria-area garage by two intoxicated undergraduates. The wackiness does not stop there though.
2012 also saw a rash of crazy capers involving vehicles. In November a gang of thieves piled into an SUV and smashed through the entrance of a Calgary-area mall in order to rob a jewelry store and in June, an anonymous tip informed police that tractor stolen way back in December of 2010 was buried in a giant pile of manure. Crime ultimately may not pay but – at least in some of these cases – it can be entertaining.
