Key Takeaways
- Montréal police arrested 14 people — eight adults and six minors — in a Nov 11 operation against a jewellery-robbery network.
- About 10 searches seized $3.9 million in jewellery, cash and other evidence across four cities.
- Police link the network to a string of the 55 jewellery robberies recorded in Montréal this year, 34 of them smash-and-grabs.
Fourteen arrested as police take down a jewellery-robbery network
Montréal police say they have dismantled a structured criminal network suspected of carrying out the majority of the jewellery-store robberies in the Montréal area in recent months, arresting 14 people in a coordinated operation on Wednesday.
Investigators believe the network ran a division of labour: organizers and coordinators linked the people who ordered the robberies to the people who carried them out, and young executants were recruited mainly through digital platforms. The investigation began after a series of similar robberies in Montréal and across the region, in Laval, Longueuil, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Rosemère. The first recorded event dates to February, with a marked increase from June.
Eight of those arrested are adults and six are minors, aged 14 to 17. Police carried out about 10 searches in Montréal, Laval, Rosemère and Longueuil, seizing $3.9 million in jewellery, cash and other evidence, alongside the Longueuil and Laval police services and specialized SPVM units.
The scale of the robbery wave
Montréal has recorded 55 jewellery-store robberies since January 1, 34 of them smash-and-grabs in which display cases were smashed with hammers. Since the first arrests in the wider files on September 11, police say roughly 40 arrests and 12 searches have followed.
Five adults appeared at the Montréal courthouse on Thursday morning, facing charges that include robbery and laundering the proceeds of crime: Jason Clerveaux, 21; Marly Cliff Delcy, 31; Roldy Fénélon-Jean, 19; Nerrissa Gilda Louis, 23; and Sheikha Safa, 20. Three other suspects were released pending further proceedings. The six minors appeared in the Youth Division of the Court of Québec on robbery charges; their identities are protected by law.
The investigation is part of projet Unis, the concerted Québec police effort against crime and violence targeting merchants. Anyone with information can contact Info-Crime Montréal at 514-393-1133; tips are anonymous and confidential.
The charges have not been proven in court.
The Twikup Take
Jewellery stores have been hit again and again this year — 55 robberies, most of them brazen hammer jobs. Police are now describing an organized pipeline behind them, not a run of copycats, and the $3.9 million seizure is meant to show the network's money, not just its foot soldiers, is in hand. Whether the robberies actually stop is the test that comes next.
Image: Service de police de la Ville de Montréal.