Canada’s highest court says one of the men behind the notorious 2012 maple syrup heist in Quebec will have to pay a $9.1-million dollar fine.
In a unanimous decision today, the Supreme Court of Canada said Richard Vallières must pay a fine equal to the value of the stolen syrup—not just equal to the profit he made from it.
The Supreme Court says Quebec’s Court of Appeal was wrong to reduce his fine to $1 million.
Vallieres was found guilty in 2016 of fraud, trafficking and theft of 9,500 barrels of syrup between 2011 and 2012 from a central Quebec warehouse storing product from the province’s maple syrup producers.
The stolen syrup was worth more than $18 million, but Vallières said during his trial that he had sold it for $10 million and made a $1-million profit.
The Supreme Court says Vallières has 10 years to pay the fine, failing which he will serve six years in prison.
It reduced Vallieres’ $10-million fine by about $830,000, the amount he owed to the federation of syrup producers under a separate court order.
