The astonishing true story behind Prime Video's The Sticky, explained

Modified Dec 06, 2024 01:54 GMT

Margo Martindale as Ruth Landry (Image via Prime Video)

The Sticky is a dark comedy series written and created by Brian Donovan and Ed Herro and directed by Micheal Dowse and Joyce Wong. The series will be released on Prime Video on December 6, 2024.

The story is set in Quebec, where a small maple syrup farmer Ruth Landry is facing the threat of her farm's seizure. To save her property, she teams up with a Boston mobster and a security guard to pull off a grand robbery.

The series is based on a real heist that took place in Canada in which a group of thieves stole over 9500 barrels of maple syrup worth Canadian $18 million from a warehouse in Quebec.

The Sticky stars Margo Martindale, Chris Diamantopoulos, Guillaume Cyr, and Jamie Lee Curtis in prominent roles.

The Sticky is based on the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist

The series is based on real events that the Canadian media often called the 'Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist.' It is the largest heist carried out in the country in terms of the value of the goods stolen, which was estimated to be over C$18 million.

Between 2011 and 2012, a group of thieves stole over 3500 barrels of maple syrup from a storage facility of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, the organization responsible for holding almost all the maple syrup produced in the country.

The organization founded in 1966 maintains a strategic maple syrup reserve, officially known as the International Strategic Reserve. The syrup is stored in barrels across multiple warehouses.

Through an insider, the thieves discovered that the warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford lacked adequate security and took advantage of the situation.

They started to siphon the syrup from the barrels, filling it with water, which would be checked only once a year. However, soon they started to extract the liquid directly from the barrels without refilling them.

The syrup was then sold to different buyers, creating a black market for the thieves. An interesting fact about this heist was that the perpetrators conceived themselves as Robinhood who were taking on a cartel-like giant organization.

How were the thieves caught?

One day, Inspector Michel Gauvreau knocked over one of the empty barrels, which would have been impossible if it had been filled with syrup. After investigation, the scale of the theft came to attention and it was found that over 3000 tonnes of maple syrup had been stolen, making it the biggest theft in the history of Canada.

Police arrested 17 men related to the theft in two days between December 18 and 20, 2012. The main perpetrators of the heist were Richard Vallières, Raymond Vallières, Étienne St-Pierre, Avik Caro, and Sébastien Jutras.

Richard Vallières was given eight years in prison and a fine of C$9.4 million. Avik Caron got five years in jail plus a $1.2 million fine. Raymond Vallières and Étienne St-Pierre got two years in prison followed by three years of probation, while Sébastien Jutras served eight months.

Season 1 episode 5 of the Netflix documentary series Dirty Money, titled The Maple Syrup Heist, covered the story that The Sticky is inspired by.