crime
Millions stolen from money storage facility in the USA
The perpetrators got into the building through the roof of the money storage facility. photo
© Richard Vogel/AP
The police in California are faced with several puzzles: How could criminals get into a depot and steal around $30 million unnoticed? Experts are convinced: professionals were at work.
In a cinematic break-in at a money storage facility near Los Angeles, thieves stole up to $30 million (almost 28 million euros) in cash. The spectacular coup took place on Easter Sunday in a low-rise building in Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley (US state of California), where cash from companies in the region is kept, the police said.
The perpetrators got into the building through a hole in the roof, reported the “Los Angeles Times” citing investigators. They then gained access to a safe, said Elaine Morales of the Los Angeles police, according to the newspaper. It is said to be one of the largest cash heists in the history of the US metropolis .
“A really well thought out job”
The theft was only discovered on Monday. It remained unclear how the criminals were able to circumvent the security measures. According to reports, an alarm was triggered, but the system was not connected to police headquarters.
Video footage from a helicopter also showed a hole in one of the side walls that had been temporarily covered with a piece of chipboard. The thieves may have also tried to get into the building through the wall. This belongs to a Canadian security company.
It was said that only very few people knew about the large sums of cash that were stored in the depot, which is located around 35 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles. The investigators therefore assumed that the thieves, who were said to be professionals, had an accomplice in the building. The Federal Police Agency FBI is investigating together with the police in Los Angeles.
“The theft has all the hallmarks of a really well-thought-out job,” author Scott Andrew Selby told the Los Angeles Times. Investigators were now investigating crimes around the world using a similar approach. Whether the whereabouts of the money can be traced depends on whether there are records of the serial numbers of the notes.
Selby is one of the co-authors of the book “Flawless: The True Story of the Biggest Diamond Heist of All Time,” which deals with the spectacular February 2003 coup at the Diamond Center in Antwerp. The burglars locked themselves in the building over one weekend and broke into 120 lockers. They steal diamonds and securities worth 100 million euros.
“It’s so unbelievable that you would never suspect it,” a company employee told KABC. “I’m still trying to process it.” Many questions are open.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the largest cash heist to date in the Southern California metropolis occurred in 1997, when almost $19 million was stolen from a cash vault. The perpetrators were caught then.