Thieves stole $30 million in cash: This Los Angeles heist sounds like it came from a thriller novel

After stealing into a money storage facility in Los Angeles on Easter Sunday and picking the lock, thieves made off with $30 million in cash. Investigators are still working to piece together the blatant cash theft, which is supposedly among the biggest in Los Angeles history.

Police The Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the incident, was informed by Cmdr. Elaine Morales that the burglars had gained entry to both the building and the safe containing the money. It wasn’t until they unlocked the vault that the company’s owners realized there had been a significant theft.

According to media sources, GardaWorld, a multinational cash management and security organization, has a presence in Sylmar. An inquiry for comment from The Associated Press was not immediately answered by the Canada-based corporation, which also manages fleets of armored automobiles.

A department representative for the LAPD, Officer David Cuellar, said that around 4:30 am on Sunday, police responded to a request for assistance at a business located on the block where GardaWorld’s Sylmar site is located.

Approximately 20 miles (30 km) north of downtown Los Angeles, in an industrial area of the San Fernando Valley neighborhood, many TV news teams were shooting outside the building on Thursday morning.

KABC-TV’s aerial video revealed a sizable opening on the building’s side that seemed to be boarded over with plywood.

On Thursday, the FBI and LAPD would only confirm that they were working together to “identify the individual or group accountable” for the heist. The authorities asked the public for tips, but they withheld information such as the business name and the amount that was taken.

According to The Times, the break-in topped all armoured vehicle heists in Los Angeles and was one of the biggest cash burglaries in the city’s history.

Up to $100 million worth of diamonds and other valuables were taken from a Brink’s big rig at a truck stop in Southern California over two years ago. The pilferers remain undiscovered.

Security consultant and specialist in armored cars Jim McGuffey described the heist in Sylmar as “a shock.” According to him, any such facility need to have two alarm systems, a seismic motion detector directly on the safe, and other motion sensors spread throughout the structure.

He told AP, “You don’t just walk in and walk out with it for that kind of money.” “A facility needs to be secured from top to bottom as well as the sides.” McGuffey said that while GardaWorld has a positive reputation in the sector, “isolated incidents like this that just make no sense, but it happens to the best of them” occur in every cash management organization. AP