The World’s Eight Biggest Whiskey Robberies

Telling The Tales Of The Largest Heists Of Whisk(e)y In World History

By Richard Thomas

Whether you spell it with or without the “e,” whiskey has always attracted criminals. Sometimes they are evading taxation and sometimes Prohibition laws, but sometimes Scotch and bourbon attract just plain thieves as well. That shouldn’t be surprising: whiskey is known for its pricey bottlings and has always been an imminently portable commodity, so of course it attracts robbery. Wine attracts the same degree of criminal attention, and that isn’t even counting the fraud.

In drawing up this list, I chose to exclude Prohibition-era robberies from consideration. That time was characterized by numerous liquor hijackings between gangs, as well as the disappearance of vast stores of whiskey from distillery warehouses. Crimes of this sort are of an entirely different creature, all of it overlapping with bootlegging, and so will perhaps become the subject of a future article.

8. The Glenglassaugh Gift Shop Pinching ($13,000): The Glenglassaugh Distillery in Aberdeenshire, Scotland opened one June 2014 morning to find that several dozen bottles from lots of their 37 and 40 year old single malt missing. A few sweaters were also taken, presumably as an afterthought. To date, the robber(s) have never been identified, let alone apprehended.

7. Toronto Thief Walks Off With Pricey Glenfiddich ($26,000): Everyone says Canadians are such nice people, but even that can’t explain the lack of security needed for a man to walk into a state-run liquor store and pick up a 50 year old bottle of The Glenfiddich, let alone just walk out the door with it. Yet that is exactly what happened in a Toronto liquor store in April 2013, and he was even caught on video doing it!

6. Chilean Gang Lifts Scotch From New Jersey ($52,000): In September 2017, six men working together distracted the staff of a liquor store in Bergen, New Jersey, popped open the display case, and made off with three pricey bottles: Tullibardine 1952; Highland Park 50 year old; and Maccallan V5 Reflexion. Police speculate the gang was part of a larger Chilean syndicate responsible for similar (albeit smaller) robberies of expensive liquor from retail stores across North America.

5. Pappygate (estimated value $100,000): Most readers will be familiar with only the infamous Pappygate case of those crimes detailed here, easily the most reported American whiskey crime of the 21st Century. However, they will be surprised to see it ranked only in the middle of the list, which is a statement on two things: 1) how much rare Scotch is worth compared to rare bourbon; and 2) that whiskey really is a volume business, so (see below) hijacking a truckload is a much bigger payday for a crook.

In 2013, some routine inventory checks led Buffalo Trace to realize they were missing $26,000 worth of merchandise (regular retail prices, not market value), including over 200 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle whiskeys and a stainless steel storage barrel of Eagle Rare 17 Year Old. A tip off and subsequent investigation led to the doorstep of Gilbert “Toby” Curtsinger, a Buffalo Trace employee who led a ring of 10 indicted members, many of who worked at Kentucky distilleries and were members of the same softball team. The ring had also stolen bourbon from Wild Turkey, including entire barrels of the stuff, and dealt in illegal steroids as well.

Curtsinger’s crew rolled over on him, and as a result he was the only one who went to prison. After pleading guilty, Curtsinger was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but served only about a month of that time. He was released from prison in 2018.

4. The Sad Case of the Old Farm Pure Rye Thief ($100,000): Tying Pappygate is a very different and sadder tale of robbery. Former model Patricia Hill set out to turn an old Pennsylvania mansion into a B&B, discovering nine cases of pre-Prohibition era Old Farm Pure Rye Whiskey under the stairs at her property. Her stroke of good fortune turned sour however, because unfortunately for Patricia, she had also hired a family friend, John Saunders, to assist in renovations and serve as caretaker of her property.

Years passed since the discovery, and in 2013 Hill decided to check on her stash of vintage whiskey, only to find half of it emptied. Only Saunders knew where the bottles were kept, and subsequent DNA testing of the empties revealed it was he who had opened and drained the bottles of rare whiskey. Saunders was arrested, but died of natural causes before he could stand trial.

3. The South African JD Caper (estimated $240,000): In Vereeniging, South Africa in 2018, a truckload of Jack Daniel’s was stopped by a pair of cars mounting blue lights and pretending to be police. The gang of six then hijacked the truck. South African police responded quickly, locating the stolen truck, arresting three of the gang members and recovering 2/3s of the stolen merchandise. Reports indicate the rest of the hijackers were later arrested while again pretending to be police as part of another hijacking, but whether the remainder of the Jack Daniel’s was ever recovered remains unclear.

2. The Chicago Outfit Hijacks A Truckload Of Bourbon (estimated $484,000 in today’s money): This is the only tale of whiskey robbing instigated by the American Mafia on this list, but it involves all the hallmarks of a good mob story. On December 30, 1957, a truck carrying 875 cases of whiskey from Louisville to Chicago was hijacked. 400 of those cases found their way to the Cafe Continental in Chicago, operated by connected guys Gerald Covelli and David Falzone. The remainder was sent to other mob-owned establishments.

This pair were connected to several murders and disappearances; the hostess of the Continental was Covelli’s girlfriend, later wife after the murder of her husband. They were brought to trial for the hijacking in 1959, which resulted in a hung jury voting 11 to 1. The holdout, Robert Saporito, later confessed to being paid by his brother, an ex-Chicago police officer, to vote innocent. Covelli was later plead guilty to a charge of jury tampering in the case.

1. The Great Paris Whisky Robbery ($800,000): In a well-planned and executed 2017 caper, thieves made off with the most lucrative haul in the history of post-Prohibition whisky crime, when they knocked over the famed Parisian institution, La Maison du Whisky.

The French adore whisky, a fact best shown in France’s standing as the world’s second most lucrative whisky market. But it wasn’t Scotch, bourbon or even Irish whiskey the thieves targeted. Instead, they stole 69 bottles of what is now the rarest commodity in all of world brown spirits: ultra-aged Japanese whisky. One bottle, Karuizama 1960 “The Squirrel,” was worth almost a quarter of the entire haul.