The Case of a Very Costly Service Call

An armored car’s crew left the keys in the ignition while servicing an automatic teller machine and returned to find both the van and its cargo of about $750,000 missing, the FBI said Saturday.

Although the van was recovered Friday, about 11 hours after it disappeared, the cash was not, said an FBI spokesman who spoke on the condition he not be identified.

No arrests had been made Saturday, the FBI said.

Van Recovered

The theft occurred Friday morning in front of the University of Maryland Student Union Building downtown and the van was recovered that night in front of a supermarket in neighboring Anne Arundel County, police said.

The driver, Charles Taylor, 29, told police he left the keys in the ignition, according to company policy, and closed his door. With the keys in the ignition, the doors of the van are supposed to lock automatically.

When Taylor and his co-worker, Jose Chavarria, 40, returned from servicing an automatic teller machine, the van was gone, they told police. The two men said they were in the building for about 10 minutes.

Mark Feighery, a spokesman for NCR Corp., said the theft is the first since its Columbia-based subsidiary, Automatic Teller Machine Services Inc., was formed four years ago to handle automatic teller machines for financial institutions.

Feighery said that the company carried insurance to cover such a loss.