Suspected rooftop bank heist crew targeted San Gabriel Valley banks
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The bank heist crew didn’t carry demand notes or ever see a bank teller.
Their tools of choice were a powered cutting saw, hand-held radios andladders.
They walked away with millions of dollars in recent years by simply cutting through the rooftops of San Gabriel Valley banks under cover of darkness.
They made holes in the roofs to access the money and slipped away with bags of cash unnoticed before dawn.
They have been responsible for three rooftop heists since August 2011, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department officials said.
For more than a year, sheriff’s detectives searched for clues to identify the bandits and gathered DNA at the crime scenes. The evidence led detectives to arrest five Inland Empire men as suspects in the unique heists, Sheriff Lee Baca said.
“It is one of the most elaborate crimes we have seen,” Baca said Wednesday. “This is something out of a movie script.”
-- Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times