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It’s been nearly six months since Amy Wang and her husband were able to open the Scarborough convenience store where they once worked thirteen hours a day, seven days a week.
They were collateral victims of a strange kind of smash and grab — where the smashing was done by an excavator trying to grab the ATM in the Scotiabank branch next door.
It crushed the roof of their shop, Rouge Convenience, and caused the storefront to collapse. When Wang rushed to the site in the middle of the night, their family’s sole source of income was rubble.
“I think my brain just stopped there for maybe a minute,” she told CBC Toronto.
“We built [this business] day and night for the past few years and overnight it’s gone. Nothing. I was so sad.”
Police say the thieves failed to get away with any cash, though they did cause over $600,000 worth of damage to the plaza, according to its owner.
This unique form of theft has been happening all over the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. Thieves on the hunt for cash break through the walls of banks using excavators that experts say anyone capable of ordering a key online can drive off the lot.
Similar thefts have garnered headlines across Canada. And while police forces in the GTA could not immediately provide data about how many incidents there have been involving excavators, news reports indicate there have been at least six in the past year.
In early June, suspects stole an ATM after smashing through a Brampton TD branch with an excavator. Later that month, Wang’s Scarborough store was destroyed in an attempted bank theft.
An excavator was the tool of choice to smash through a BMO branch and steal an ATM machine in Whitby in September and, more recently, suspects allegedly used an excavator to smash through a CIBC branch in Etobicoke in late November.
No one has been charged in any of these cases, police say, including the theft that damaged Wang’s store.
With these types of thefts, it’s typically the same network of suspects that’s responsible for multiple instances across the GTA, said Const. Tyler Bell-Morena with Peel Region police.
While Bell-Morena says the use of heavy construction machinery isn’t common, there has been an uptick in thieves using large vehicles to break into storefronts, particularly small jewelry stores.
“A lot of these places, while they make every effort to be secure, there’s only so much you can do,” Bell-Morena said.
The bank branch has reopened since the June incident, but Wang’s store is still being rebuilt. In the meantime, losing the family business they started after immigrating to Canada meant her husband had to find a temporary job.
Wang hopes to reopen in time for Christmas, but she has so much anxiety about another excavator incident, she’s made a habit of checking her security cameras several times overnight to ensure what’s left of her shop is intact.
“The sense of safety I think is just no longer there,” she said.
A car is harder to steal than an excavator, expert says
Stealing these large machines is no brilliant heist. Unlike a car, most of them can be powered with a master key that anyone could buy online, said Tim Allan, who teaches at Centennial College’s heavy duty equipment program.
He says once someone gets an excavator engine running and has some time to get used to the levers (which work somewhat like a claw machine at an arcade), operating one isn’t too hard.
What is hard is escaping with one — Allan says many excavators only drive up to 13 km/h.
“So you’re not going to steal that machine and drive it across town,” he said.
“I would imagine what’s happening is [thieves] find an excavator parked someplace that they have a key for and look around for the nearest bank.”
Allan says construction companies can install security systems inside their machines to prevent these thefts, but many don’t, likely because having a different key or code to each machine can be impractical.
“If a company has one hundred machines, they can’t keep track of one hundred different keys,” Allan said.
CBC News reached out to several companies whose equipment was involved in recent thefts but did not hear back before deadline.
“These types of crimes are an attack on the community that these branches serve as repairs impact service and access to customers,” a spokesperson for the Canadian Bankers Association said in a written statement.
“Canada’s banks continue to work closely with law enforcement to ensure the safety and security of their operations, their employees and their customers.”
