CBC investigation says Iran likely paid for a dozen gun-for-hire shootings in Toronto

As of 9:26 a.m. ET, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026

A dozen politically motivated gun-for-hire shootings in the Toronto area appear to have been financed by the Iranian government, according to a CBC News investigation published Tuesday. Toronto police said they are looking into possible foreign involvement but would not confirm it.

CBC reported that the shootings targeted synagogues, a school and businesses in the Greater Toronto Area, as well as the U.S. Consulate downtown. It said many came in the hours and days after the United States and Israel began bombing Iran on Feb. 28. No one was injured in any of the shootings, according to CBC.

What CBC reported

CBC said the attacks had the hallmarks of gun-for-hire jobs: early-morning shootings in which suspects arrived in stolen cars, fired handguns into building entrances and filmed the attacks on a phone. The broadcaster said it spent weeks researching the shootings, obtaining court files where arrests had been made and building profiles of the accused. According to CBC, most of the suspects face charges in more than one attack, and many are young, ranging in age from 15 to their early 20s. None of the accused has been convicted.

CBC reported a pattern of shootings clustered in the same parts of the city on the same nights. It said synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were in several cases hit shortly before or after attacks on business and home addresses linked to waste management company Green for Life (GFL). Toronto police told CBC that ballistic tests confirm that link.

CBC also pointed to a U.S. case. It reported that an indictment filed in New York accuses Mohammad Baqer al-Saadi, whom the FBI says is a senior member of a militia controlled by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, of helping plan at least 18 attacks in Europe and two in Canada: the March 2026 shooting at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto and an attack on a synagogue. Al-Saadi faces six terrorism-related charges, CBC said. He has not been convicted.

What police say

"We have heard information that there may be foreign actors that are involved. We are investigating every angle," Toronto Police Chief Superintendent Joe Matthews, who oversees the investigation, told CBC. "At this point, I'm not willing to confirm or deny that piece of it, but what I will say is that we don't think there's a very direct connection between the financier and the perpetrator on the street."

"We're seeing firearms that are being used in multiple shootings that aren't just geopolitical targeted, they are crossing over with GFL," Matthews told CBC.

In June, the Toronto Police Service said investigators had linked the March 10 consulate shooting to dozens of other firearm discharges across the region. Police alleged that young people were being recruited through encrypted messaging apps to carry out attacks and had to record them to get paid. The service said the RCMP's Integrated National Security Enforcement Team was running a parallel investigation into the consulate shooting as a national security threat. "We are still working actively to investigate who is responsible for orchestrating these criminal acts," Chief Myron Demkiw said at the time.

After the consulate shooting in March, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme called it "a national security matter" and said the RCMP had increased security around embassies and consulates nationwide.

What is not known

Police have not publicly identified who financed the shootings. CBC said it asked Iran's Foreign Ministry about the allegations and got no response, and noted that Tehran has dismissed past claims that it sponsors violence abroad. As of this writing, GROKsiNEWS.com had not found any new public statement from Toronto police or the RCMP responding to the CBC report. GROKsiNEWS.com has not independently verified CBC's findings.