$30M gone in ‘The L.A. Job’
Money storage facility hit by stealthy, sophisticated thieves
Thieves in Los Angeles sneaked into a money storage facility on Easter Sunday and absconded with as much as $30 million in cash, a brazen heist that continues to baffle investigators a week later.
Authorities have remained mostly mum on the theft, confirming few details outside the fact that it occurred at a money storage facility in a suburban Sylmar neighborhood.
Local news outlets, citing sources, have since identified the facility as GardaWorld, a Canadian-based global cash management and security company, which also operates its own fleet of armored vehicles.
According to the Los Angeles Times, which broke news of the crime last week, a burglary crew scaled the building on Roxford St. and then busted through the roof without setting off any alarms.
Once inside, they gained access to the money storage area, “which may have been a vault,” police said. Still undetected, the thieves were able to then make off with a bunch of cash, the exact amount of which authorities are still working to determine.
Very few people would have known how much money was stored at the facility, the Times noted.
While police have not discussed specifics about the money itself, including the denomination of the bills, moving such a large sum would likely prove challenging.
The weight of $1 million in $100 bills alone is about 22 pounds, according to testimony from a U.S. Treasury official to Congress. The heft jumps to about 250 pounds when considering various denominations, like $5s, $10s and $20s, which means the overall weight of last weekend’s haul could be as much as 7,500 pounds.
But that did not deter the burglars. Police said the theft was so wellplanned, the operators of the business did not notice the money was missing until they opened the vault Monday morning. The only indication of any misdeed was a gaping hole in the side of the building with a pile of debris next to it — though it’s unclear if that damage was a result of the break-in, per KABC-TV.
Randy Sutton, a former police detective in New Jersey and Las Vegas who investigated major crimes and high-end burglaries, said a crime of this scale had likely been planned for months or even longer.
“This took a tremendous amount of research and tremendous amount of knowledge on the technical end regarding the circumvention of security systems and surveillance,” he said, adding authorities have likely already started interviewing staff at the facility.
“You can bet that not just current employees of that organization are going to be scrutinized, but prior employees as well,” Sutton said.
The theft is said to be one of the largest in Southern California, and potentially one of the biggest such heists in U.S. history. It comes less than two years after thieves pilfered millions of dollars worth of gems and jewelry from a Brink’s tractor-trailer while the driver was asleep inside.
On Sept. 27, 1997, $18.9 million was stolen from the former site of the Dunbar Armored facility on Mateo St. in Los Angeles. Those thieves were eventually arrested.