10 - Roberto Tejada This armored truck guard worked
as a driver for Miracle Delivery Services….until when he decided to try to steal 800,000 dollars
in cash! He was more intelligent than your average armored truck driver turned thief since
he stole the money over several months to avoid detection. He also tried to alter documents to
account for all the missing cash. It didn't work in the end, but at least he put in some effort.
Police discovered that Tejada used some cash to buy five brand new 2021 cars for his family
members. Unfortunately, the police don't recognize Robinhood-like acts of charity as a valid excuse.
Buying 5 new cars with stolen cash isn't a great way to avoid detection,
is it? The police took all the cars and the cash, which he was keeping in his bedroom.
9 - Mark Nicholas Espinosa Garda, the armored truck company,
doesn't publicly post how much their drivers make. But according to job website Indeed.com,
the average starting pay for Garda drivers is $12.46 an hour. Does that seem like a good idea,
considering you hired these people to drive around with bags of money? You're
practically asking your employees to try something, aren't you?
Mark Nicholas Espinosa, unsatisfied by his $12.46 an hour,
stole more than 900,000 dollars during a routine pick-up and delivery in Kentucky.
Espinosa was supposed to meet his partner on the other side of the mall
they collected cash from. But instead of driving the bulletproof,
armored truck to the meeting spot, he disappeared. Well, he tried to,
anyway. The truck was abandoned in the mall parking lot, but Espinosa and the cash were gone.
He was later arrested near Hartford, Connecticut, where he'd been living there under the false
identity of Sam Smith. Not the most creative fake name, huh? He apparently bought a Chevrolet
Malibu five days after the theft, which is also not the most creative car you could
buy with 900,000 dollars. He was probably trying to keep a low profile, but clearly,
it wasn't low enough. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison after pleading guilty. He, of course,
had to pay Garda back. 8 - Traffic Jam
An armored truck on its way to San Diego caused an unexpected traffic problem when
money started flying out the back of it. You can have all the bulletproof glass you want,
but it really doesn't matter if you leave the door unlocked and bags of money rained onto the street.
The bills that came out were mostly 1s and 20s. But it was still enough to bring traffic to a
screeching halt. People stopped their cars, got out, and grabbed as much cash as possible.
Videos from the lucrative traffic jam were posted all over social media and made cable news.
California Highway Patrol eventually shut down the highway until they could clear the scene. Only two
people ended up getting arrested. They got caught because they locked themselves out of their cars
in their rush to grab all this free money. The two of them were just standing there like idiots when
the cops showed up. Everyone else had already driven off. It isn't known precisely how much
money was lost and how much people actually got away with. According to police, there was less
than $1 million in the truck. Anyone who grabbed the money and didn't return it committed a crime.
7 - Inside Job Not all armored
truck heists are amateurish attempts where employees just grab what they can and run.
Sometimes, there's a bit more strategy involved. Three people were charged
in a Brinks armored truck robbery in 2021, and one of them was the driver.
The driver told the company and the police that he had been attacked while
getting coffee at a gas station. He said one guy held him up while another took
all the money out of the truck. There was security footage to back up his story too.
However, when police found the people who robbed the truck,
they realized both robbers knew the driver. To make matters worse, the driver was in on
it. They planned on splitting the money 3 ways, but all didn't go according to plan.
This is actually a fairly common tactic. It's not the first time it's been tried,
and it's not even the first time it's been tried by people who work for Brinks. In 2019,
a different Brinks driver told detectives that a man in a motorcycle helmet robbed him at gunpoint
and stole all the cash. When the mysterious motorcycle man got caught, it turned out to be
the driver's friend. Apparently, it's a little harder to stage a robbery than people think.
6 - Release the Reports In 2018, a man built his own armored vehicle and
stopped traffic for an hour and a half on a bridge near the Hoover Dam. He had a gun and a sign that
said "Release the OIG Report," which is some conspiracy theory reference. The driver, Matthew
P. Wright, was eventually arrested and charged with obstruction of a highway, endangerment,
unlawful flight from law enforcement, misconduct involving a weapon, and terrorist acts.
Highway 93 had to be shut down, other cars were evacuated,
and tourists at the Hoover Dam were told to shelter in place. Police sent multiple
armored units to the scene. The madman decided to leave and headed towards Arizona. However,
he ran into a roadblock of tractor-trailers the cops set up. He made a U-turn and attempted to
drive the other way instead, but he ran over spike strips and popped his tires.
Surprisingly, this was not the end of his conspiracy adventure. He drove his armored car
off the highway and made it 3 miles away from the road before being surrounded by police.
He ended up surrendering peacefully. In a certain sense, he won since many people saw his sign,
and it ended up in lots of YouTube videos like this one. But in a much more real sense, he
lost because he's in jail and can no longer read about conspiracies on the internet.
5 - Bryan Johnson You don't have to be a
real armored truck driver to pull off one of these heists. All you really need is a little
bit of imagination and some clothes that make it look like you're an armored truck driver.
In 2015, Bryan Johnson walked into a Walmart dressed like a Loomis armored
vehicle driver. He wore all black, a hat, and a tactical-looking vest with many pockets.
It looked close enough. He walked right in, signed for the money, and then left.
When the actual Loomis employee showed up about 45 minutes later,
the Walmart employees realized something was up. They'd just given 75,000 dollars to the wrong guy.
When the police caught Johnson, they discovered his getaway driver was the Walmart manager's
stepdaughter, Mariah Bustamonte. The manager's name was Rico Roberston,
and police arrested him too, figuring he had something to do with it. It turns out
they were right; Robertson planned the whole thing.
However, police dropped the charges against Robertson a year later,
after he suffered a stroke and couldn't stand trial. Johnson, our wannabe armored truck driver,
was never caught and, by all accounts, is still at large today, along with the money he stole.
He's wanted for the Walmart heist and several crimes in California, including a shooting.
4 - Robbed and Fired
Getting robbed is probably the worst thing that can happen as an armored truck driver.
Getting fired is perhaps the second-worst thing that can happen. Unfortunately,
Sabrina Gimeno got to experience both when she was robbed and then subsequently fired.
A seven-year veteran driver for Brinks Armored Trucks, Gimeno was returning to her vehicle with
bags of cash. It stopped being a routine stop when three masked gunmen jumped out of an SUV.
In the surveillance video, you can see one of them keeping a weapon on
her while the others grab the money. In the end, they made off with $100,000.
Just a few days later, she got fired. Brinks said she violated protocol and never gave her, the
news, or anyone else a better explanation. Maybe Brinks suspected that Gimeno had somehow been
involved in the robbery, and the whole thing was an inside job. After all, it wouldn't be the first
time drivers have pulled that classic scheme. Gimeno denies having any sort of involvement.
Unless it was the greatest indie job of all time, the video doesn't back up that theory. Gimeno was
forced to the ground and feared for her life. All she could think about was her three kids,
who depended on her at home. Most inside jobs don't put the driver directly in harm's way.
3 - Dan Kennedy In 2015,
a Utah man named Dan Kennedy saw a large orange bag in the middle of the highway.
He pulled over and grabbed it, thinking it could be a traffic hazard. When he grabbed it,
he realized it was heavier than it looked. When he opened it, he realized why.
The bag fell out of an armored truck and was full of cash. It's unclear how much money was in there,
but news outlets reported it weighed 75 pounds, so let's do some simple math. Paper US dollars
weigh precisely 1 gram, according to The Bureau of Engraving and Printing. There are roughly 453.6
grams in a pound. So, if that bag was full of $1 bills, it would be worth $34,000. According to
Kennedy, the 4-foot-tall bag was full of smaller bags containing 50s and 100s. So, if all 75 pounds
were in $50s, he'd be holding just over $1.7 million, give or take, for the weight of the bags.
Kennedy, who is morally superior to nearly everyone else on this list,
tried to track down the armored truck and return the money. When that didn't work,
he just called the police. When they showed up, they were stunned by the amount of cash.
How do you manage to lose a 75-pound bag of money? The drivers said they hit a bad bump in the road,
and the backdoor came open by mistake. Either these armored trucks aren't as secure as they
should be, or the roads in Utah are wild. 2 - Larry Brooks
He had a horrible day at his new job as an armored truck guard. If he hadn't gotten caught, it could
have been the best day of his life. He tried to steal 100,000 dollars in cold hard cash on his
first day. Maybe he should have waited longer to develop a better plan because the company caught
him red-handed on their security cameras. He was arrested and charged with second-degree theft.
The company he worked for, Garda, recovered 86,000 from a car parked near Larry's house.
Then they contacted the police. Before anyone judges Larry too hard,
they should ask themselves – could I resist taking huge stacks of cash just sitting there? Well,
some people evidently can since not all guards get arrested. After this incident,
it's safe to assume Garda was a little more careful in their hiring process.
1 - Bathobile Mlangeni While working for SBV
Secure Collections in South Africa, Bathobile decided to loot the cash she was supposed to
protect. While at a pick-up depot at the Mall of Africa, Bathobile used a pair of scissors to slice
open two bags of cash. Then, she stuffed about 4 million South African Rands into garbage bags,
and left before anyone knew what happened. Her brazen theft occurred in July 2019, and she
remained on the run for the next three years. Nobody knew what happened to her, where she’d
gone, or where she stashed the cash. Her mother remained adamant that Bathobile
could never commit such a crime. According to Mama Mlangeni, her daughter would never steal
a penny. A neighbor told police she showed up at his house in December 2019 and stayed
a few days before hitting the road again. He had no idea she was wanted for the robbery.
Police thought they were close when other neighbors claimed they saw Bathobile at her
sister’s wedding. However, Mama Mlangeni spoke up again, denying everything the neighbors said.
She hadn’t seen her daughter since she “allegedly” stole the money in July.
Oddly, the family never filed a missing persons report, which is strange for being so convinced
she’s innocent. They spent a majority of the Covid pandemic wondering what happened to her. Then,
she turned up in January 2022. Now in prison and refusing bail,
Bathobile awaits her future in a South African holding facility. Perhaps mask mandates and
other restrictions allowed her to hide and plain sight. After all, her face was plastered across
every tabloid in the country. Even though police caught up to her, they never recovered the money.
Maybe she spent it all at the Mall of Africa? Click to watch one of these next videos!
And let us know in the comment section if your life depended on performing a successful heist
of something worth at least $100, what would you steal and where would you steal from?