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More and more people around the world
are getting to experience cuisines and food ingredients

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that even just one hundred or so
years ago, they would never even have

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heard of. And as this phenomenon
grows, so does the foodie culture that

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comes along with it. And it's
everywhere millions of online blogs, food magazines,

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TV shows, and would you believe
it, even podcasts. But as

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people begin to expand the culinary experiences
of their palettes, sometimes their wallets don't

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have the requisite funds to match their
appetites. And so what is a person

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to do? Well? For many
people, they turn to the tried and

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tested five fingered discount, shoving some
or other ingredient inconspicuously into their clothing or

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bags. But today's stories aren't just
about the small time pilfering of food here

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and there from your local grocery stores. No, today we'll be talking about

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people stealing truckloads of the stuff at
a time, not it seems to quell

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their six callings as much as to
refill those empty wallets. But here's a

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question for you to try and guess
before we come back from the intro.

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What food do you think is stolen
more than any other all around the world.

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See if you can get it right, and I'll tell you the answer

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when we come back. These are
the bizarre but true stories from history that

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in some way involved food. I'm
Nick Charlie Key, and this is the

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fantastic history of food. One of
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we're back and before the break,
I asked you to guess what you

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thought would be the world's most stolen
food and would you believe the correct answer

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is cheese. Now, I would
have thought it would be candy or something

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like that, but when you really
think about it, it actually makes a

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lot of sense. There are a
lot of very expensive cheeses, aren't there,

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And they come in particularly compact packages, perfect for slipping into a pocket

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or a bag. And it's not
just old mavers from down the road pilfering

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a tasty Wensleydale for her afternoon tea. No, most cheese thefts end up

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being resold to restaurants or independent grocers. And if you think about it,

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how can you track a stolen cheese
Once any identifying labels have been peeled off,

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it really could have come from anywhere. Now, Even as recently as

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the last decade or so, there
have been numerous high profile cheese heists around

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the world. In New Zealand,
a twenty three year old woman and a

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twenty one year old man broke into
a train loaded with cheese that was bound

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for Auckland. They grabbed as much
cheddar as they could and then loaded it

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into their old car, dreaming of
the world's biggest cheese fondue. But alas,

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the police was soon notified and discovered
the old car sputtering along as fast

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as it could. Unfortunately, for
the dairy based equivalent of Bonnie and Clyde,

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their cars fastest wasn't quite fast enough. The cops were racing along behind

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them, trying to get them to
pull over, when all of a sudden,

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the police car in front swerved violently. The cops in the secon and

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car looked at each other as they
realized what they had just seen. Multiple

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one kilogram blocks of six month old
mature cheddar was being lobbed at the police

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by the cheesy dairy devils ahead of
them. Luckily for the police, none

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of them were injured by the cheese
grenades, which is especially surprising considering that

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aged cheddar is often known to be
rather sharp. Anyway, the miscreants were

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apprehended and peace was once again restored
to New Zealand's dairy industry. There was

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also the time when police pulled over
a Russian man driving a truck just off

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the New Jersey Turnpike, and upon
closer inspection of his vehicle, found that

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he was carrying forty two thousand pounds
of stolen Amish cheese. As it turns

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out, the man had arrived at
the shipping factory, provided false paperwork,

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loaded the cheese on board, and
simply driven away. The cheese had originally

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been destined for Texas, but it
was thankfully found and apprehended before it reached

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its final destination thousands of miles away. But both of these criminal escapades pale

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in comparison to the mother of all
cheese heists, when throughout the central and

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northern regions of Italy, eleven clandestine
thieves pilford more than two thousand wheels of

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their country's greatest pride and joy,
Partamisiano reggiano, or as we more commonly

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know it outside of Italy, parmesan. Now, if you've ever done any

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cooking with parmesan, you will know
it is not a cheap product. Hence

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why the eleven highly equipped thieves,
using specialized electronic equipment, radios, weapons,

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and more, stood to make almost
one million dollars just from those two

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thousand wheels of cheesy goodness. Now, there are actually so many stories of

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people's stealing cheese. I could probably
start a whole new podcast just telling those

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stories. But for the sake of
my time and your sanity, I'll put

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that one on the back burn it
for now. I'll stay with us as

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after the break we'll find out that
food is not always the subject of heists,

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but has also been used as a
tool with which to commit the crime

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00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:23,519
itself. The Sign Hustle Show is
the award winning business podcast you can actually

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you're looking for a little breathing room
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success for entrepreneurs to find out how
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them at side Hustle nation dot com.

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00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:16,720
We're back, and as promised,
let me tell you about a few enterprising

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thieves who sought to fool their intended
victims with the use of some ingenious food

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based weaponry. Now, I think
we've all seen the movie trope where a

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robber doesn't have a gun and so
uses a banana stuffed in his pocket to

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create that sort of menacing gun shaped
outline with which to scare his victims.

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But as the famous saying goes,
life often imitates art, as in the

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case of a man in Israel who
successfully robbed two different banks armed only with

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an avocado. The forty seven year
old man, who had previously served three

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years for aggravated robbery, was up
to his old tricks again, but this

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time he had a new and ingenious
plan. They couldn't charge him with the

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use of a weapon while in the
commission of a crime if he didn't actually

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have a weapon, right, so
what he needed was something that simply looked

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like a weapon and in hope that
his ruse fooled the unsuspecting bank tellers.

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Before he left his house that morning, he grabbed an avocado from his fruit

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bowl, found some black paint,
and then applied it all over the outside

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of the avoux. He found a
piece of paper and enscrolled the words hand

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over the money in the drawer,
before donning his disguise of a big jaunty

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hat and in a somewhat surprising choice, strapped an eyepatch to his face.

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He set out on foot to the
local shopping mall in southern Israel and calmly

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walked inside the local branch of the
Postal bank. After waiting patiently in line,

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a confusing choice for a man who
was clearly trying not to be suspicious,

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but who was also at the same
time wearing an eyepatch. He then

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approached the first available teller. He
handed her the note that he had written

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earlier, but being that the eyepatch
man was nearly not the greatest intellect,

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he had misspelled the word drawer so
badly that the teller was confused as to

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what he wanted and just looked at
him. In that confusion, the man,

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now frustrated that he hadn't paid more
attention at school, shouted at the

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cashier to put all of the money
in his bag or he would quote throw

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this grenade at her while holding up
his black painted avocado. In what must

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have been a frightening moment for all
involved, the cashier didn't inspect the so

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called grenade any closer, but rather
did exactly as he asked, before watching

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the man escape with a bag of
cash. In an incredible turn of events,

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he would put off exactly the same
stunt just five days later at another

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bank, this time I'm sure,
after consulting the d section of his dictionary,

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and once again gone away with even
more money in total. He stole

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almost ten thousand dollars with his avocado, which, if politicians and sensationless newspapers

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are to be believed, should have
been just about enough money to buy one

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or two more avocados the whole way
Back in twenty thirteen, the police got

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a frantic phone call from an employee
of the confusingly named Fifth Third Bank in

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Michigan. They had just been robbed, but that wasn't the most pressing issue

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at that very moment, as the
woman who had held the bank up had

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left behind a bag that she claimed
contained a bomb. Everyone was too frightened

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to go near it or move it, and so they had evacuated the building

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as soon as the robber had made
her escape. The police were taking no

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chances and put in a call to
the local Michigan bomb squad, who raced

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to the scene in their big,
bulky bomb proof suits. One of the

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bomb squad made his way cautiously towards
the suspicious package, sweating as he went

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as much from the humid temperature as
from his nervousness about what lay in front

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of him. Carefully, he took
his final few footsteps towards the package,

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and slowly but surely pulled the paper
bag open to inspect the mechanics of the

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bomb that was surely hidden inside.
As he opened the bag more and more

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he couldn't see any wires or plastic
explosives, no timers or fuses, and

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eventually realized that he was looking at
two cans of spaghetti sauce. A few

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days later, the spaghetti bomber,
a woman named Ophelia Neil, was arrested

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and charged with bank robbery, and
despite the bag containing nothing more than some

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delicious passata, she was rather humorously
also charged with committing a crime with the

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use of explosives. Now we'll finish
today's episode with the story of possibly the

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most lucrative food based heist in history, involving one of the planet's most delicious

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breakfast condiments. In early twenty eleven, a few men in the Canadian province

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of Quebec hatched a plan that would
make all of them very, very wealthy.

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You see, a few of them
worked at a particular facility that produced

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one of Canada's most famous products.
It's so Canadian, in fact, that

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they produce eighty percent of the total
world supply, and of that eighty percent

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of the world supply. Ninety one
percent of it comes from this facility in

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Quebec. Have you worked out what
it is yet? Yep? It's that

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old Canadian classic maple syrup. And
maple syrup is so important to the Canadian

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economy that while other countries make sure
they have enough of the important essentials like

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fuel stockpiled against some terrible disaster,
Canada has their very own strategic maple syrup

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reserve. So it's no small thing
to steal almost thirty million dollars worth of

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this liquid gold. The men,
knowing its value, broke into the industrial

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compound storage facility and began siphoning off
barrel after barrel. Initially, they would

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use trucks to transport the barrels to
a remote shack where they would siphon them

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off into unmarked white barrels before refilling
the now empty barrels with water and returning

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them to the facility. Eventually,
this became too much of a hassle for

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them, and, with their brazenness
hitting new heights, they simply began siphoning

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the syrup into their barrels straight from
the storage facility. Over the course of

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a year, the thieves would fill
their barrels with more than ten million pounds

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of syrup, enough to fill almost
two full Olympic sized swimming pools and depriving

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the market of almost seven point five
million bottles off the shelves. But their

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brazenness was now accompanied by their laziness, and this would eventually be their downfall.

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You see, as they got more
and more confident, the less and

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less they paid attention to the small
details. Where once they had made sure

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to refill the barrels with water,
now they simply left them empty, to

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having siphoned out what they needed.
So it was in July twenty twelve,

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when the yearly inspection was to take
place, that their scheme literally and figuratively

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came tumbling down. You see,
Inspector Michel Gavreaux began climbing up the mountain

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of stacked barrels in order to get
a better sense of their quantity, when,

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instead of the barrels bearing his weight
and staying steady under his feet as

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he pushed off to climb higher,
the now empty barrels instead toppled under his

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efforts. Police were immediately alerted and
the investigation began with only a fraction of

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the barrels being able to be identified
and recovered. Later that year, however,

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seventeen men were arrested in connection with
the theft, with fines of around

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a million dollars handed out to more
than one of them, along with some

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hefty jail sentences. So if there's
one thing we've learned today, well,

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in terms of actual potential for monetary
gain, Prime very much does pay.

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00:15:58,559 --> 00:16:02,759
But it's also worth noting that in
each and every story today there would be

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criminals were always caught and eventually sent
to prison. Surprisingly, even I patched

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Genius, whose disguise couldn't stop police
from using his cell phone data to place

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him at the scene both crimes.
This show is made entirely by me,

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00:16:22,799 --> 00:16:26,720
Nick Charlie Key, with our theme
music having been made by the enigma that

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00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:36,960
is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If
you'd like to support the show, the

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00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:40,919
simplest way to do that is over
on our Patreon account. There's just one

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00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:44,759
option, so for just two bucks
a month, you'll help me keep producing

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00:16:44,759 --> 00:16:48,519
the show, and in return,
you'll get your name forever etched onto our

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00:16:48,559 --> 00:16:52,879
supporters Wall of Fame over on our
website. No, and then maybe listen

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00:16:52,879 --> 00:17:07,440
out for your name in an upcoming
episode, So until next time, bonappetite flow