Ottawa Security Footage Resurfaces Showing How One Crafty Employee Walked Out With $165K in Gold, Stuffed Where the Sun Don't Shine

OTTAWA — Move over, Goldfinger. Meet Leston Lawrence, the Royal Canadian Mint employee who turned his backside into a personal Fort Knox.
In a heist straight out of a bad comedy sketch, the 35-year-old refinery worker was convicted of swiping 22 cookie-sized gold “pucks,” each about the size of an Oreo or small hockey puck, by cramming them up his rectum and strolling past metal detectors like it was no big deal.

Security footage from 2015 shows Lawrence at the checkpoint, arms raised, looking cool as a cucumber while a guard waves a handheld wand over him. Alarms? They went off 28 times across his smuggling spree, the court heard. But apparently, body cavities were the one blind spot in the fortress-like mint’s high-tech security.

Over several months in late 2014 and early 2015, Lawrence allegedly pilfered the shiny contraband while working alone in the purification area, out of camera range. He’d then waddle out the front door, sell the pucks at Ottawa Gold Buyers for about 70-80 cents on the dollar, and pocket roughly $130,000.

Cops finally got wise after a suspicious gold buyer and bank alerts. Investigators raided his locker and found the smoking gun(s): Vaseline and latex gloves. Judge Peter Doody later noted the items “could have been used to facilitate insertion of gold items inside his rectum.”

Lawrence was fired in March 2015. By the time he was busted, 17 pucks were long gone. Police recovered five more before he could unload them. The total haul? Worth about CA$165,451 at the time.

In November 2016, Ontario Court Justice Doody found him guilty on theft and laundering charges based on strong circumstantial evidence. Sentencing came in February 2017: 30 months behind bars, plus a whopping CA$190,000 fine (or another 30 months if he didn’t pay up).

The case became an international punchline. Stephen Colbert dubbed him “Goldsphincter.” Late-night hosts had a field day. Even serious outlets couldn’t resist the headlines.