Farmers May be Involved in Tobacco Thefts: OPP

Source from:  The Simcoe Reformer 01/13/2009

It was late at night and police knew something wasn't right. A cube van driving down a back road in Ontario's tobacco-growing area is considered a tell-tale sign of trouble. After passing the vehicle, a Brant OPP officer turned around and gave chase. By the time police caught up, it had been driven into a field and abandoned. The van's occupants ran into a second vehicle and fled. "We obviously stopped another occurrence from happening," said Brant OPP Const. Larry Plummer, referring to the increasing number of thefts of tobacco from area barns. Police in Brant and Norfolk counties are on the lookout for suspicious vehicles on back roads late at night in the wake of a series of thefts of the cured golden leaf over the past year and a half. Some of the heists have been large, worth anywhere between $15,000 and $50,000. In some cases, 200 bales or more are being hauled away at one time. The story is always the same. A farmer wakes up, goes to his barn, and finds it has been broken into and part of his crop is missing. Nobody can say for certain where the tobacco is going. But it is assumed the leaf is being sold to unlicensed cigarette factories, quite possibly the ones operating on the nearby Six Nations reserve, said RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Marc LaPorte. "There are a lot of illegitimate or unlicensed tobacco factories on Six Nations and they have to get the supply from somewhere," said LaPorte. Another possibility is the farmers themselves are implicit in what is happening, Plummer hinted. "Some thefts are legitimate, but maybe not all of them are," he said. "Sometimes the persons (arrested) know what place to go to and load up." LaPorte noted that with a government buyout of the industry coming, farmers have to keep their inventory up for a final accounting of their crop. "If a farmer is fraudulently selling tobacco to an unlicensed cigarette factory, he can't show what he's produced is on hand," he said. "He could fraudulently make a claim he is a victim of theft." For farmers, who have struggled financially as their industry has shrivelled to one-tenth of what it was at its peak, theft is one more thing to worry about. Linda Lietaer, spokesperson for the Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers' Marketing Board, called the thefts "disturbing." "This is of great concern not only to tobacco farm families, but also to their communities," Lietaer said. "They've been identified as thefts and we take the farmer at his word that they're thefts," she added. In Norfolk County, thieves struck the same farm near Langton twice last week. The second time they left empty-handed, leaving behind a stolen pick up truck with bales piled in the back. Inside the barn, vehicles blocking the way from removing any more tobacco were damaged in unsuccessful attempts to move them. Police are unsure why but the thieves decided to flee in mid-heist. "We can only assume there was a second vehicle," said Norfolk OPP Const. Mark Foster. Enditem