Armored Car Is Robbed by Extortionist

In a new twist on a classic crime, a thief took bags of cash totaling more than $1 million from a Brinks armored car driver in Los Angeles -- and the weapon was an extortion letter, police said.

Armored car robberies are not unusual, said FBI Special Agent John McEachern, “but I have not seen a case like this in my 30 years” in law enforcement.

The driver told officers that a man handed him a letter at 6th Avenue and Pico Boulevard about 2:30 p.m. Sunday, and it ordered him to bring the armored car with at least $1 million to 29th and San Pedro streets, police sources said. The letter threatened harm to the driver’s family members, and identified them by first and last names, the sources said.

Police released few details about the crime, and it wasn’t clear how the thief approached the driver or whether the driver had to reload the truck with money. Brinks Inc. officials would not comment..

The driver told police that he and his partner in the truck went to the drop site as directed and turned the cash over to the driver of a four-door black Dodge pickup truck with tinted windows. He then called police.

Robbery-homicide detectives questioned the driver for hours Sunday night at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Parker Center headquarters. The second guard in the armored car corroborated the driver’s story, police sources said.

Police and the FBI are continuing to investigate. “Extortion happens all the time ... but using extortion to rob an armored car? I haven’t heard of it before,” said Lt. Carlos Velez, who is investigating the case.

Armored car robberies often involve shootouts, since the guards carry guns. “Whoever approaches the car, they know those individuals are armed. They know some act of violence will occur,” said McEachern, the FBI special agent also investigating the case.

Such crimes date back more than half a century.

“It goes back to Boston’s Brinks case,” McEachern said.

In 1950, seven men in Halloween masks walked into a Brinks office in Boston and stole more than $1 million in cash and $1.5 million in bank notes. It was the biggest robbery in history at the time and took the FBI years to solve.

Since then, similar crimes have caught the fancy of Hollywood producers and the imagination of criminals.

In 1981, members of the Weather Underground, a radical anti-war group, took $1.6 million from a Brinks truck in New York in a crime that left one guard and two police officers dead.

In 2001, a Brinks guard was killed and another guard was wounded in a shootout with masked robbers inside a crowded San Fernando Valley supermarket.

In 1995 alone, 10 armored car guards were shot in Southern California, McEachern said.

“When you have Hollywood and movies like ‘Heat’ [a 1995 film about a Los Angeles heist], it doesn’t help,” McEachern said.

Last March, a guard for Armored Transport Inc. was killed by a robber firing a high-powered assault weapon behind a South Los Angeles bank.

The number of local armored car robberies has decreased in recent years, from 22 in 1993 to four last year, FBI officials said. The decline is attributed in part to improved security in the armored car industry, they said.

In the past, some of the largest takes have turned out to be inside jobs, officials said.

“The first thing you think when you get a case like this is: Is it a legit robbery or is it an inside job?” McEachern said.

In 1997, six men escaped with a record $18.9 million from the Dunbar Armored Co. depot in downtown Los Angeles. At the time it was the largest cash armed robbery in history. The mastermind of the heist, Allen Pace III, was a disgruntled former employee of Dunbar.

The LAPD is asking the public to report any information about the latest robbery to detectives at (213) 485-0780.