China's Largest Gold Theft Case Solved: 27 kg of Gold Fully Recovered, Mastermind Captured 100 Meters Away

On June 22, police in Nanjing, China, announced the resolution of the country’s largest gold theft case to date. All 11 suspects involved have been taken into custody, and the full 27 kilograms of stolen gold has been recovered. In the early hours of May 16, 2026, a luxury store in Nanjing’s Jiangning District was targeted in a meticulously planned heist. Ringleader Tong climbed through a second-floor window and stole 27 kilograms of gold—37 pieces worth over 27 million yuan. Notably, he avoided touching nearby luxury watches and other high-end items. Accomplice Wang had snuck into the store’s control room beforehand to disable roughly 80 security cameras, wipe all footage, and flee to Bangkok to act as the operation’s "remote director." The crime scene showed no forced entry (door locks remained intact), and erased surveillance footage initially left police stumped. Nanjing’s special task force recovered the wiped surveillance data and tracked public video feeds to reconstruct Tong’s escape route south from the city. The driver who transported Tong later told police the suspect appeared frantic, changed destinations multiple times, and when they reached Nanning, Tong couldn’t pay the remaining 7,000 yuan in fare. In an unexpected move, he settled the debt by breaking off half a 50-gram gold piece from his bag. In the early hours of May 18, the Chongzuo Aidian Border Police Station in Guangxi received an urgent cross-agency alert from Nanjing authorities. The auxiliary police team mobilized and set up a precise control perimeter in just three minutes. At 5:40 a.m., a white Jetta sedan was stopped roughly 100 meters from the China-Vietnam border, where Tong was immediately taken into custody with 8.75 kilograms of gold in his possession. The entire process—from alert to interception—took less than 30 minutes. On May 23, mastermind Wang was arrested in Bangkok and extradited back to China, where police seized 13.2 kilograms of gold from his residence. The two suspects, who had no prior criminal history and held high educational backgrounds—Tong, a hospital staff member, and Wang, a software development manager—turned to crime to pay off massive online gambling debts totaling millions to tens of millions of yuan. Both are now in the hands of law enforcement.