Holy crap: $100 million Brinks heist at CA truck stop

[Bevo 13569]

7 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

There must be a steal expensive jewelry virus that's afflicting America. On another note, I need to sell salvation. Seems to be a profitable business.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-bishop-wife-robbed-400k-jewelry-heist-live-streamed-service-rcna39780

 

A Brooklyn bishop and his wife were robbed during a livestreamed sermon Sunday after armed assailants stormed the service and made off with around $400,000 worth of jewelry, New York City police said.

Bishop Lamor Whitehead was in the middle of delivering his sermon at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries church in Canarsie when three gunmen burst in around 11:15 a.m., the NYPD said.

Police said the attackers were believed to have taken around $400,000 worth of jewelry in total before fleeing the service on foot and entering a white Mercedes Benz. They were last seen traveling eastbound on Avenue D, police said.

I also heard about some doc in Chicago who had his Rolls stolen along with his $100K plus watch.

[SquishMitten 10403]

Why the hell is a pastor and his wife wearing (much less owning) $400K worth of jewelry at church? Joel Osteen isn't even that blatant about his grift. 

[SquishMitten 10403]

On 7/24/2022 at 3:04 PM, Chopper said:

Yeah definitely an inside job...but the circle of those with inside info could be pretty large. Any of the vendors or their associates. Any of the event center employees at any of the destinations on the tour. Anyone who helped load the truck at one point or another. Heck, anyone who attended one of the shows and became interested to learn how the valuables were transported could have done it. The brinks guys are the most obvious sus but would also be the easiest to catch. It could be any other brinks co-workers too, current or past, if they were aware of the logistics. There's also the remote possibility that some random recognized it as a brinks truck somewhere along its route and decided to follow it and see if it was their lucky day.

Source: have watched a lot of detective shows.

We'll see how smart they are. Wouldn't be shocked if they end up catching the person because they were the only vendor that opted for significantly higher insurance on the shipment than normal.

[Beau Vine 54208]

57 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

There must be a steal expensive jewelry virus that's afflicting America. On another note, I need to sell salvation. Seems to be a profitable business.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-bishop-wife-robbed-400k-jewelry-heist-live-streamed-service-rcna39780

 

A Brooklyn bishop and his wife were robbed during a livestreamed sermon Sunday after armed assailants stormed the service and made off with around $400,000 worth of jewelry, New York City police said.

Bishop Lamor Whitehead was in the middle of delivering his sermon at the Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries church in Canarsie when three gunmen burst in around 11:15 a.m., the NYPD said.

Police said the attackers were believed to have taken around $400,000 worth of jewelry in total before fleeing the service on foot and entering a white Mercedes Benz. They were last seen traveling eastbound on Avenue D, police said.

[Pato del Muerto 52487]

46 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

Why the hell is a pastor and his wife wearing (much less owning) $400K worth of jewelry at church? Joel Osteen isn't even that blatant about his grift. 

Was it all off of the pastor and wife, or did they rob the entire congregation?

[Beau Vine 54208]

52 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Was it all off of the pastor and wife, or did they rob the entire congregation?

I believe it's the pastor's (and wife's) job to rob the congregation.

[SquishMitten 10403]

19 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Was it all off of the pastor and wife, or did they rob the entire congregation?

From reading multiple articles, the only people that were reportedly robbed were the bishop and his wife. 

[Beau Vine 54208]

1 hour ago, SquishMitten said:

From reading multiple articles, the only people that were reportedly robbed were the bishop and his wife. 

[Gil Bang 25921]

 

 

[chainsaw 9859]

13 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

 

 

Here's what you're going to do. You're going to drive up the Interstate. You're going to stop at the Flying J. You do this all the time, act naturally. Maybe you pull out your phone, maybe you read a newspaper. Maybe you fall asleep. What you're not going to do is watch the back of the truck. What you're not going to do is notice any unusual sounds or any unusual people. 27 minutes later, you'll check on the cargo and notice something's missing. You call the authorities. They'll ask you questions. You tell them you left the truck unattended. Tell them you felt it would be secure. Tell them you didn't think anything like this could happen. The media will probably run with this story. Don't talk to them. Let it blow over. A week later, the media will forget about this. Then the real investigators will come around. This part is very important. You change your story. Now you tell them you were asleep inside the truck. That's all you remember.

[SHOOTER12 8800]

On 7/22/2022 at 10:48 AM, High Plains Drifter said:

 

 

Guards had to be in on it.

 

 

Yep, inside job with more than the guards involved. 

[ButtFumble 5164]

you would think with that much stuff (shit even $10 million) they would at least have a trailing tail gunner car

shit with Brinks you would think they would have a car with 2 or 3 guys in it stationed somewhere away from the event center entirely and waiting for the truck to roll and then picking it up en-route and following it....that way it is harder for others that might be plotting to rip it off to immediately identify what car they might need to go after if they are going for an armed ambush

[Jkwellborn 6692]

 
 

If there’s no camera showing the rear of the trailer, then yeah, it’s no big deal to mess with the back of a 53’ trailer.

I feel like surely they would have used something better than what truck drivers normally use. Because I can cut one of those off in less than 90 seconds.

[Hagbard Celine 10852]

lollers moving 8 figures+ of untraceables in a semi? brinks needs to upgradejya

[Bevo&Pevo 5121]

The Mammoth Car; enjoy your trip to the past.

 

[Steel Shank 9421]

Sometimes, when I'm in the backyard on the patio enjoying a cocktail, I think to myself, "you know, @Hagbard Celine reminds me a lot of Racer X".

[Hagbard Celine 10852]

[Gil Bang 25921]

 

[Gil Bang 25921]

It has been more than two months since the multimillion-dollar heist of jewelry from a Brink’s big rig at a Grapevine truck stop, yet key facts about the high-profile crime remain in dispute.

There’s debate about the value of the pilfered goods, for example, with estimates ranging from less than $10 million to more than $100 million. And questions are now swirling around the timeline laid out in a Brink’s legal filing and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department documents, which suggest an almost impossibly swift journey for the tractor-trailer.

This much is known: a Brink’s big rig loaded with the wares of jewelers participating in the International Gem and Jewelry Show departed the San Mateo County Event Center on July 11 for a storage yard about 370 miles south in downtown L.A.

From there, the players in the case disagree. Brink’s said in a lawsuit that its two drivers made the roughly 298-mile, late-night trek from San Mateo to the Flying J Travel Center in Lebec in about 2 hours, 4 minutes, even fitting in a stop along Interstate 5. To traverse that distance so quickly, the vehicle would have had to drive at speeds upward of 140 mph.

It would take more than four hours to drive the route while adhering to speed limits.

Jerry Kroll, attorney for the victim jewelers, who number more than a dozen, said that the sequence of events described by Brink’s “doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why aren’t we being told what happened here? This can’t be,” Kroll said. “Our clients deserve an explanation. The victims suffered a life-altering theft ... and they are given a set of facts that doesn’t add up.”

It is unclear whether the improbability of the timeline laid out by Brink’s and the Sheriff’s Department could be attributed to a simple misstatement or another mundane explanation. Similar caveats apply to questions about the timing of authorities’ response to the crime, in which thieves stole 22 bags of booty while, according to Brink’s, one of the drivers snoozed inside his vehicle’s sleeping berth and the other was getting food at the Flying J.

A Sheriff’s Department incident report reviewed by The Times said that both drivers told a deputy that their vehicle left San Mateo at about 12:01 a.m. — information also noted by Brink’s in a legal filing. At 2:05 a.m., the big rig arrived at the Flying J, and the driver went to get his meal, according to Brink’s. Upon his return 27 minutes later at 2:32 a.m., Brink’s said, the driver discovered that the 18-wheeler had been compromised. A news release issued by the Sheriff’s Department on July 18 said that the theft occurred during the same time frame.

The sheriff’s incident report, which was drawn from initial interviews with the drivers, said that deputies responded to a “vehicle burglary call for service” at the truck stop around 3:56 a.m. It did not say when the drivers alerted law enforcement, leaving unclear how much time elapsed between the crime, its reporting and authorities’ response.

Asked about the chronology, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Mileski said, “We are not prepared to provide updated information at this time,” though he noted that investigators with the department’s major crimes bureau had conducted in-depth interviews with all those involved.

Brink’s spokeswoman Dana Callahan said that the company is “continuing to work with the law enforcement agencies investigating this incident. We defer to those agencies on questions about their investigations.”

 

 

 

Kroll said the most unlikely element of the chronology disclosed by Brink’s relates to the 18-wheeler’s journey as it approached the Grapevine. Brink’s has said that the vehicle stopped at the Buttonwillow rest area about 1:49 a.m. so one of the drivers could use the bathroom, and then continued on to the Flying J, reaching it about 16 minutes later. The Buttonwillow rest stop is about 55 miles from the Flying J. Covering that distance in a little more than a quarter of an hour would require driving at speeds upward of 200 mph.

“There’s no credibility to it,” Kroll said.

Recently, two Times journalists made separate car trips down that 55-mile stretch of the Interstate 5. One of the drives took 46 minutes and the other, completed in traffic that was at times very heavy, took 1 hour, 21 minutes.

The timeline was first disclosed in an Aug. 4 lawsuit filed by Brink’s against the affected jewelry companies, whose merchandise the company was transporting to the L.A. area for another trade show. The complaint is part of a wider legal dispute between the Richmond, Va., company and the jewelers over the size of the stolen haul.

The Brink’s lawsuit alleged that the pilfered items had a declared total value of $8.7 million — a figure it said was drawn from agreements signed by its jewelry business customers. The complaint seeks to limit any payout Brink’s could have to make to the jewelers to that amount, alleging they “substantially under-declared the value of their shipments.” (Some jewelers have said that they assigned their merchandise lower values than their fair-market costs to reduce shipping fees.)

 

 

The jewelry businesses later alleged in a lawsuit filed against Brink’s and other parties that the unnamed tractor-trailer drivers’ conduct was “grossly negligent” — and that “lax security” by the company allowed the theft to occur. The lawsuit for alleged breach of contract and additional claims said the jewelry companies’ merchandise was worth about $100 million. It seeks at least $200 million in restitution and damages.

The sheriff’s incident report, dated July 11, reveals new details about the heist.

Written by a deputy who arrived at the scene, the report said that the driver who dined at the Flying J found upon his return to the vehicle that its lock had been “cut away and the latches, where the lock once was, were bent. The lock was no where [sic] to be found.”

 

 

The sleeping driver noted that he “did not see who committed the burglary or hear anything unusual, or notice that they were being followed by anyone,” the report said. But, it said, the thieves left something behind: “metal fragments at the base of the trailer’s locking mechanism.”

The incident report said that the tractor-trailer’s cargo — which included gems, jewelry, watches and other precious items — was contained in “orange marked Brinks bags.” It also said that the blue 2019 Volvo big rig was “marked Brinks.” It did not note the presence of vehicle security features that jewelers and others in the industry have told The Times they expected Brink’s to have utilized when shipping valuable merchandise. For example, the report does not mention an alarm on the door of the Brink’s trailer or cameras anywhere on the vehicle.

 

An evidence photo provided by the FBI shows a sampling of items stolen in the Brink’s heist.

(FBI)

 

 

Arnold Duke, president of the International Gem and Jewelry Show, said he “always thought there was” an alarm on the door, “but certainly never checked it.”

“I was under the impression that everything had satellite tracking, cameras, alarms,” he said.

Callahan did not respond to a question about the vehicle’s security features but has previously said that Brink’s does not disclose information on the topic because it could compromise operations.

 

 

Investigators believe that the heist was the work of sophisticated criminals, given the lack of violence and the speed of the thieves’ work, among other factors. Sheriff’s Department investigators, who are working with the FBI, have said that they have obtained video footage related to the incident.

 

BUSINESS

They lost millions in Brink’s truck jewelry heist and have big questions about what happened

 

Jewelers say that their businesses have been upended by the loss of their merchandise. “For some of them, [the theft] has completely destroyed their financial lives,” Kroll said.

 

 

As for the vexed timeline, he said: “Brink’s has some explaining to do to the court — and to my clients.”

 

 

 

 

[Sbbruin 21829]

These 2 guys would never have let that happen.

[crash_davis 23101]

Inside job if there ever was one. I wonder how many customers drop Brinks' handling of this shit?

[Gil Bang 25921]

 

[0xdeadbeef 1645]

When Lifetime makes this into a movie in a few years, they'll probably just call it "The Inside Jewelry Heist"... and it's not going to be a who-done-it type movie.  

 I'll bet the cops have a pretty good idea who did it, but knowing and proving are two different things.  They're just waiting for some dumb-ass to give his wife a half million dollar ring for Christmas.  It's only a matter of time. 

 

 

[UTexasFight 9429]

1 hour ago, 0xdeadbeef said:

 

 I'll bet the cops have a pretty good idea who did it, but knowing and proving are two different things.  They're just waiting for some dumb-ass to give his wife a half million dollar ring for Christmas.  It's only a matter of time. 

 

 

But she opened that door and I knelt on the floor
And I put that ring in her hand
Then she said, "I do" and she'd leave with me soon
To the rigs out in South Alabama

 

Well, I told her to hide that ring there inside
And wait 'til the timing was good
And I drove back home and I was alone
'Cause I thought that she understood

 

The next night an old friend just called me to wish us both well
He said, he'd seen her downtown, sashaying around
And her diamond how it sparkled in the lights of loving county

 

Well that sheriff, he found me out wandering
All around El Paso the very next day
You see, I'd lost my mind on that broken white line
Before I even reached Balmorhea

 

[Call 393]