Easter Sunday robbery: Thieves dismantle money storage facility, steal $30m cash
By Ifeanyi Eduzor, with agency reports
While christians all over the world celebrated Easter last Sunday, some dare devil robbers chose the holy day to commit crime that saw them cart away a whooping 30 million dollars.
According to agency reports, the Los Angeles police and the FBI are now investigating the crime that saw burglars apparently break through the roof of a money storage facility and cracked a safe.
AFP quoted David Cuellar of the Los Angeles Police Department as saying the robbery — one of the largest cash thefts in the city’s history — took place on Easter Sunday in the northern suburb of Sylmar.
The Los Angeles Times, citing a source familiar with the investigation, said burglars busted through a roof to access the building’s vault, somehow evading a sophisticated alarm system.
The elaborate and complex theft appeared to be the work of an experienced crew, and was only discovered on Monday when staff opened the vault, the newspaper said.
“It’s just mind blowing that you would never suspect it,” an anonymous employee of the facility told ABC News.
“$30 million in the Valley, gone. How? Why? I’m still trying to process it. Was it an inside job? Was it just one person? Was it a group? You know, there’s a lot of questions.”
While the crime is reminiscent of Hollywood heist movies like “Ocean’s Eleven,” it follows a string of real-life, sophisticated break-ins in the region over the years.
Two years ago, thieves made off with up to $100 million in jewels from a truck parked at a highway rest stop en route to a gem and jewelry show in Los Angeles.
Last July, a man cut a hole in the ceiling of a high-end wine store near Venice Beach, before helping himself to $600,000 worth of fine Burgundy and Bordeaux vintages.
According to the LA Times, the largest previously known cash heist in the city’s history came in 1997, when $18.9 million was stolen from an armored depot. The thieves were eventually caught.
