THE methodical Ocean’s Eleven-style heist where burglars stole as much as $30 million in cash from a money storage facility could take years to crack, a former FBI agent has told The U.S. Sun.
Like something out of a Hollywood film script, thieves managed to sneak into the Gardaworld building in San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, on the evening of Easter Sunday 2024, undetected and without triggering any alarms.
Armored trucks parked outside the offices of GardaWorld in San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, in April 2024AP:Associated Press
The hole on the south side of the building that had been boarded upABC NEWS
The elaborate, well-thought-out plan resulted in one of the largest cash heists in the history of Los Angeles.
FBI officials believe the stealthy suspects used a ladder to scale the building’s roof, where they gained access to the facility through a hatch, before entering the vault area where the money was stored.
On the morning of April 1, 2024, aerial footage captured an apparent hole on the south side of the building that had been boarded up, as a pile of debris laid on the grass.
Terry Rankhorn, a former FBI special agent who spent decades investigating cyber, fraud, and wire fraud cases, told The U.S. Sun the hole in the wall was likely the thieves’ exit point.
“They probably had hand carts on a truck outside,” Rankhorn speculated.
“They pulled up, shuttled the money out on that and made away with it. In Los Angeles, that’s reasonably close proximity to the Mexican border.
“If I were guessing, the smart move would have been to get it across the border because it’s probably going to be easier to get there.
“You can’t just walk into a bank with 25 million dollars in money and deposit it without drawing a significant amount of scrutiny.”
Rankhorn said it could be years before names connected to the March 31, 2024, heist begin to emerge.
“The people who did it will be discovered, but we just have to wait and be patient with it,” he added.
“We can’t put a time or say, if you haven’t found him in a year, you haven’t found him. Well, that’s just not the case.
“[The FBI] looked for D.B. Cooper for decades and never stopped looking until the point where he couldn’t reasonably still be alive.”
D.B. COOPER MYSTERY
The unsolved mystery surrounding infamous hijacker D.B. Cooper began on November 24, 1971, when a middle-aged man identifying himself as Dan Cooper purchased a one-way $20 ticket from Northwest Orient flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle.
Carrying a black attache case and a brown paper bag, Cooper boarded Flight 305 sometime after 2:30 pm local time, took his seat in the last row, 18E, and ordered himself a drink.
Sometime after takeoff, at around 3 pm, Cooper handed a note to a flight attendant, identified as 23-year-old Florence Schaffner, sitting in a jump seat behind him, revealing that he had a bomb in his suitcase.
The mild-mannered hijacker requested four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills in exchange for the 36 other passengers on board.
The president of Northwest Orient authorized the payment of the ransom and ordered the six crew onboard to comply with Cooper’s orders.
For approximately two hours, Flight 305 circled above Seattle to give authorities enough time to scramble together the ransom money and the parachutes, and mobilize other emergency personnel.
Upon landing, per Cooper’s instructions, one representative from the airline was permitted to board the plane. They dropped off the items and the cash, and the passengers were permitted to disembark.
The plane was then refueled and Cooper ordered the pilots to fly southeast in the direction of Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft.
Flight 305 took off for a second time at 7.40pm and, shortly after, Cooper ordered all remaining crew to stay in the cockpit as he made his way towards the aft ramp in the tail of the plane.
One stewardess caught a glimpse of Cooper standing in the aisle, tying what appeared to be the bag of money around his waist.
That was the last anyone ever saw of Cooper. He’d later become known as DB Cooper when a journalist at the time accidentally mistyped Dan as DB in a report and the name stuck.
A little after 8 pm, somewhere over southwest Washington, a light flashed up on the instrument panel in the cockpit, indicating the rear exit door had been opened.
With that, Cooper was gone, parachuting out into the stormy night sky with his ransom and the briefcase and brown paper bag he’d boarded the plane with.
Despite a massive search, no trace of Cooper or his parachutes was ever found.
An FBI drawing of infamous commercial airline hijacker D. B. Cooper, who parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 jet in November 1971 after collecting a $200,000 ransomGetty Images – Getty
Gardaworld armored trucks parked in the parking lot of the storage facility in San Fernando ValleyABC NEWS
‘INFINITE MEMORY’
Rankhorn, who spent 21 years in the FBI, said that despite the meticulous heist, the suspects – like DB Cooper – will never be out of the woods and will eventually make a mistake.
“These people, congratulations, you have 20 to 30 years of looking over your shoulder and more than likely you will be caught in the end,” the former federal agent told The U.S. Sun.
“They may think that, Ok, I’ve waited a year, I’ve waited two years, now I can start buying luxury items. Well, if the FBI is involved, the FBI has infinite memory.
“They never forget the people that they’ve been looking for. They’ve been looking for people for 30 years and sometimes will find them.
“So, you’re never as a criminal out of the woods. If you’re involved in this case, you have to look over your shoulder for literally the rest of your life.
“There is no grace period. There’s no statute of limitations on this.”
Rankhorn continued, “In any criminal endeavor, the number of people that you involve in it exponentially increases your chance of discovery.
“There was a famous pirate named Captain Kidd who famously said three people can keep a secret when two of them are dead.
“And what that means is that when people execute a crime like this, a really spectacular crime, people like to talk.
“And oftentimes, the criminal pathology, the people that are drawn to this life of crime, they have impulse control.
“So, they’re going to be more likely to either brag out of ego or brag when they’ve had too many drinks under their belt.”
There was a famous pirate named Captain Kidd who famously said three people can keep a secret when two of them are dead.
Terry Rankhorn, former FBI special agent
Rankhorn reckons the problem the thieves will encounter is how to spend the stolen cash.
“Their biggest problem comes in on how to actually use the money,” he added.
“And that sounds like a silly statement, but there’s a great TV series called Ozark, where that in there a money launderer tells some criminals who came into quite a bit a cash and said, well, what you have is a lifetime supply of groceries because you can’t carry a suitcase around of money and just pay with everything in cash.
“We are in an increasingly more and more digital economy where it’s fairly rare to pay cash for things.
“And some things are fairly or reasonably impossible to pay in cash.
“You don’t buy a house in cash, you don’t buy a nice, expensive car with cash.
“You don’t rent cars with cash. You don’t buy airline tickets with cash.”
However, Rankhorn suspects the burglars have already integrated the cash into the banking system through money launderers, which he believes they set up before the heist.
“They will probably sit on this substantially for probably a year. In the meantime, they’re probably already have integrated it into the banking system because as a criminal, you don’t want to sit on a fungible asset,” he said.
“Liquid assets like cash are dangerous because other criminals will come and kill you and take it, or your colleagues will kill you and take it.
“So, they probably have it already integrated into the banking system, if they have any brains at all. And they’re just waiting, abiding their time to try to begin spending.”
The FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office told The U.S. Sun the investigation is ongoing, adding it would be inappropriate to comment.
The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bombshell DB Cooper clue could finally solve case
A BOMBSHELL new clue could be the key to cracking the notorious DB Cooper case after children of suspect Richard Floyd McCoy II came forward in 2024.
They believe they have proof their dad was DB Cooper, as the parachute used to escape from the plane is still in their garage.
Chante and Richard III ‘Rick’ McCoy contacted YouTuber Dan Gryder, inviting him into their home in 2022.
Gryder has been investigating the infamous case for years and had previously reached out to the siblings.
Speaking to Cowboy State Daily, Gryder believes that a modified military parachute in the McCoys’ garage could be the real deal.
Gryder said: “That rig is literally one in a billion.”
And the two McCoy siblings agree, however they refrained from coming forward with their speculation until their mother died, as they believed she was complicit in her husband’s crime.
Many believe McCoy is the infamous hijacker after he jumped from a United Airlines flight flying over Utah in 1972, after $500,000.
Gryder also revealed that the FBI has contacted him after detailing his investigation on YouTube.
The amateur investigator claimed FBI agents met with him and Rick in 2023 to take the harness and parachute into evidence, as well as a logbook Chante found that aligned with the hijacking case.
Following the handover, an FBI agent called Rick a month later to ask for permission to search the family property.
According to Rick, FBI agents with the help of local authorities thoroughly searched “every nook and cranny.”
He said: “It’s a good sign that they’re taking this seriously.”
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