The comedy series from Amazon Prime Video The sticky one At the center is an unexpected conspiracy: a multi-million dollar heist to steal millions of dollars worth of maple syrup. Loosely inspired by the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Robbery – one of the largest agricultural thefts in history – the series brings this bizarre true story to life with a few twists.

The sticky one Screenwriter and co-creator Brian Donovan discovered the story of the infamous heist by accident. “I was at a boring family Christmas party and was just looking for something interesting to talk about,” he recalled to CBC. “Luckily my brother-in-law is Canadian and he was like, ‘Hey, have you heard about the big maple syrup robbery?’ And I said, “No, but please tell me all about it now.” And he told me all about the crime, and then he also told me about Montreal and the different mafia groups that are there and all the fascinating things about the area.”

Donovan and co-creator Ed Herro were inspired by the heist and got to work The sticky onePrime Video’s six-part series about Canadian maple syrup farmer Ruth Landry (Margo Martindale). When Ruth finds out her farm is in danger, she plans to steal millions of dollars’ worth of maple syrup as revenge, enlisting the help of a warehouse guard (Guillaume Cyr) and a gangster (Chris Diamantopoulos).

Read on to learn more about the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, including the fate of the thieves and some of the biggest changes the series made for the big screen.

What was the great Canadian maple syrup heist?

In late 2011 and early 2012, a group of thieves planned to steal nearly 3,000 tons of maple syrup worth $18.7 million from a Fédération des producteurs acéricoles du Québec (FPAQ) warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Québec. Blandford, Quebec. The FPAQ is the governing body that oversees the syrup trade in Quebec.

The syrup was stored in unmarked white metal drums and checked only once a year. According to Bloomberg, the thieves trucked the barrels to a remote sugar smelter, where they siphoned off the syrup, refilled the barrels with water and then returned them to the facility. Eventually, the thieves began siphoning syrup directly from the barrels in the supply without refilling them. The stolen syrup was then shipped south and east where, to avoid detection, it was smuggled in small quantities and sold to syrup dealers who knew nothing of the operation.

The theft was discovered by the association in July 2012 during a routine inventory check when a barrel that was supposed to be filled with syrup was found but was empty. Officials quickly realized that many of their barrels contained water instead of syrup. An investigation by Quebec Provincial Police led to the arrest of 26 people, including the ringleader behind the plot, Richard Valliere.

In April 2017, Valliere was found guilty of theft, fraud and trafficking in stolen goods. As CBC reported at the time, he was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined nearly $9.4 million. Vallières’ co-defendants, including his father Raymond and a New Brunswick-based syrup dealer Etienne St-Pierre, were also found guilty of participating in the robbery.

What did The sticky one Change from the real robbery?

According to Donovan, the characters are in The sticky one According to Time.com, they are not based on real people because the robberies involve people who are still alive and have committed crimes. Donovan told the website his approach is not to “reproduce the truth” but to “simply be inspired by what happened and move on from there.”

The biggest change from the actual Canadian Maple Syrup heist and the series is the pace at which the heist takes place. In the series, the heist lasts several hours as the thieves plan to replace the barrels with sea water. In reality, the crime was “slow, methodical and, let’s face it, kind of boring,” Herro wrote in an article for The Hollywood Reporter.

Herro explained that the true story wasn’t fun at all, but as soon as he allowed himself to deviate from the facts, “all these unexpected qualities came to the fore.” For example, The sticky one begins with a human body in the syrup vat, but that didn’t happen in the 2012 heist.

In the series, the thieves gain access to a warehouse thanks to a security guard named Remy, a man who lives with his parents and realizes this meaning in life. His father even happens to show up at the raid to visit his son at work. Accordingly Time.comWhile someone from the inside helped the robbers, Remy’s character is completely fictional. Instead, it was an unnamed person who rented another part of the warehouse and helped carry out the robbery.

Herro also told CBC that another creative license they took was to portray the leaders of the syrup management organization as corrupt and using them for the wrong reasons. “We’re not saying that’s true at all in the real world… but we wanted Ruth to be attacked so she could fight back,” he explained.

All six episodes of The sticky one are streaming on Prime Video. Check out the official trailer below.