Earlier this month 38-year-old Leston Lawrence was found guilty of smuggling 22 gold pucks from the Ottawa mint in his rectum and trading most of them for cash through Ottawa Gold Buyers store.
The convict's job at the mint was to purify gold until it was 99.5 per cent pure and then scoop some of the metal out with a ladle to examine its purity. All the pucks were supposed to be returned into the vat of molten gold after probe.
According to court documents, Lawrence was recorded setting off Royal Canadian Mint metal detectors 28 times in four months. Each time after they signaled, the mint's security guards checked Lawrence again using less sensitive handheld detectors but they didn't detect metal in body cavities.
After smuggling the gold, Lawrence sold it at a cash-for-gold store in an Ottawa mall and then cashed the checks at a nearby bank. He got caught when a bank's teller found his transactions suspicious and alerted the RCMP.
According to the documents, each gold puck weighed from 192 to 264 grams and had the diameter of golf balls. After the incident the Mint reportedly installed additional high-definition security cameras and upgraded its security checkpoint system.
