Nobody at the Sylmar cash facility knew anything was wrong until Monday, when employees opened the vault and found the money gone. Thieves had taken as much as $30 million.
The burglary happened over the Easter weekend at a GardaWorld building on Roxford Street, near San Fernando Road, in the San Fernando Valley. Cmdr. Elaine Morales of the Los Angeles Police Department said the thieves got through the building and into the safe where the cash was kept. Law enforcement sources told The Los Angeles Times it was among the largest cash thefts in city history, and bigger than any armored-car heist the city has seen.
How they got in is only partly clear. Sources told the Times a burglary crew cut through the roof. A law enforcement source said there was also an attempt to breach the side of the building. Aerial video from an ABC-7 helicopter showed a large cut in the wall, patched with plywood. At least one alarm went off during the break-in, but that source said it was not connected to local law enforcement. Fox LA reported that the crew opened the vault without setting off any alarms and that the vault showed no obvious signs of forced entry.
An inside tip?
Few people would have known that much cash was sitting in that safe, law enforcement sources said. The job looked elaborate, the work of an experienced crew that knew how to get into a secure facility unnoticed.
Scott Andrew Selby, co-author of “Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History,” said the theft had “all the markings of a really well-thought-out job” by a “professional crew.” Based on other major heists, he said, the thieves probably had some inside intelligence. Investigators, he added, will be “looking around the globe for crimes with a similar M.O.”
Whether the cash can be traced depends on serial number records and on whether the bills have already circulated, Selby said. Traceable bills are hard to launder. “With touch DNA, the slightest mistake can expose the identity of a member of the crew,” he said.
The investigation
An FBI spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday night that the bureau and the LAPD are investigating together. A federal source said investigators were still working on a full accounting of the missing cash. Detectives from the LAPD’s Mission Division station went to the scene to collect evidence. No arrests have been announced.
The Canada-based company did not respond to requests for comment. GardaWorld has branches worldwide and more than 132,000 employees. It handles ATM services and armored truck transport, and its clients include Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.
The previous record for a cash robbery in Los Angeles was set on Sept. 12, 1997, when thieves took $18.9 million from the former Dunbar Armored facility on Mateo Street. That crew was eventually caught.
The Sylmar theft also comes nearly two years after as much as $100 million in jewels and valuables was stolen from a Brink’s truck at a Grapevine truck stop in July 2022. Those thieves have not been caught either.
Rooftop entries are rare in Southern California. Still, a decade ago bandits hit a series of strip-mall banks in the San Gabriel Valley and took at least $16 million before five of them were arrested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. And last July, a crew came through the roof of a Venice wine specialist and left with about 800 bottles worth about $600,000.
Sources
- Cameras were rolling when chopper killed actor, 2 kids. Was A-list director to blame?
- Easter Sunday heist – Wikipedia
- Burglary crew allegedly nets up to $30M in one of the largest cash heists in LA history
