When masked gunmen burst into Rajan Dhalla’s Winnipeg home last week, they made off with nearly $1 million worth of gold from the family’s jewelry shop.
“I want justice,” Dhalla said from the hospital, where he and his father were being treated for gunshot wounds. They sell their jewelry mainly online, but their inventory is stocked at the family home.
“They robbing me [of] five or six kg of gold. It’s not a small quantity. It’s a big quantity.”
The price of gold is at historic highs, up more than 55 per cent since this time last year, driven by investment and jewelry demand, geopolitical uncertainty, currency market volatility and inflation. The current market price for one ounce is about $6,000 and still rising.
“It just seems every single day we’re hitting new historical highs,” said Jonathan Rose, CEO of the Genesis Gold Group in Beverly Hills, Calif.
But as the surging price of gold brings opportunities for legitimate gold buyers and sellers, experts say criminals are also taking advantage.
What makes gold attractive
Rose, who has spent his career working with gold starting at the London Metal Exchange, says the metal is attractive as it’s seen as a stable and safe refuge in volatile markets and currency trading.
“We’re in the midst of a [U.S.] government shutdown, right? We’re in the midst of tariff wars with China. We’re in the midst of a Trump grenade tweet that happens every now and again. People flock to safety and security during these uncertain times.”
Experts say the metal also has many attributes that make it attractive to criminals. Gold is untraceable, meaning it can be easily melted, concealed, sold and transported.
“If gold continues to go up, it makes the existing jewelry that much more valuable and therefore much more of an attractive target, especially since the smash-and-grab type robberies are occurring in less than 90 seconds,” said Scott Hayes, crime prevention co-ordinator for Jewellers Vigilance Canada, an arm’s-length non-profit within the Canadian Jewellers Association.
“So for the same amount of time, the amount of value you are able to steal has now gone up.”
Police and jewellers in the Greater Toronto Area, all along Highway 401 to Quebec, and throughout the West say they’ve seen an uptick in smash-and-grabs at jewelry shops from late 2024 to early this year, and resurging again in the last few weeks.
The York Regional Police is one of the few keeping track of jewelry store smash-and-grabs. In 2022, there were nine. So far in 2025, there have been 13.
Security camera video shows store owners using brooms, hammers and even swords to fend off swarms of thieves as they smash display cases and scoop up jewelry.
Earlier this month, when police arrested a couple north of Saskatoon, they found jewelry from thefts in two provinces and a gold smelter that may have been used to melt some of it down.
Hayes said it’s not uncommon for people to have gold melted into their own bars. “It can pass through several hands before it’s turned into another product like jewelry again.”
Some of the smash-and-grabs may look like one-offs, but experts say organized crime is involved in many of the robberies.
For example, when it comes to money laundering, gold is “more discreet if you’re trying to move assets, move criminal funds from one place to the other,” said Ian Messenger of the Canadian Financial Crime Academy.
“You no longer need a duffel bag full of Canadian banknotes,” he said. “You need a few gold coins.”
There’s also a significant global market for gold. It’s nearly as good as cash because it has a stable and predictable value, said Messenger, a former officer with the United Kingdom’s Serious Organized Crime Agency and National Crime Agency.
In Canada, he was in charge of financial crime teams at HSBC and was director of anti-money laundering at Ontario Lottery and Gaming. Now, he teaches financial crime-related courses at Seneca Polytechnic in Toronto.
“For large organized crime groups, we know that the [United Arab Emirates] and India, for example, are significant markets for gold and other precious metals.”
‘Our industry is under significant attack’
Hayes is seeing more violent break-and-enters involving swarms of people, some of whom are now “menacing employees, grabbing employees, asking them to force open vaults or safes that were in the store.”
He believes this trend will only increase as perpetrators get more comfortable with violence.
That’s a big concern for Colin Nash, president of the Canadian Jewelry Group and owner of Nash Jewellers, a family-run business in London, Ont.
“We’ve personally been hit several times in our location,” he said. “I’m terrified for my family. We hear stories in the industry of people getting home after work and their families are tied up and they’re getting brought back to the store and being robbed.
“I just can’t say enough how scary this time is and it’s time that something needs to get done.”
Nash already has security guards at the front doors, double-laminated glass, security cameras and smoke cloaks — providing instant protection by hiding valuables behind smoke when activated.
“It’s been increasing over the past couple years and now it seems to be reaching a pinnacle of further crime,” he said. His group is getting reports of robberies every day, he said, particularly from jewelry stores in shopping and strip malls.
“Our industry is under significant attack and the only way we’re going to stop what’s happening is to get tougher on crime, tougher on bail, not allowing people in and out so easily.”
He said he was happy to see Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement on bail reform last week.
Hayes of Jewellers Vigilance Canada advises jewellers to do risk assessments on their businesses, find vulnerabilities and beef up their security accordingly.
