They Fired Him on Friday. He Came Back That Night With His Key & Stole $18.9 Million in 30 Minutes
On Friday, September 12, 1997, Dunbar Armored fired its safety officer, Allen Pace. They took his job. Nobody took his key.
Just after midnight, a side door at Dunbar’s cash depot in downtown Los Angeles quietly opened. Thirty minutes later, a rented U-Haul pulled away with nearly $18.9 million inside — so much cash that not all of the men could fit in the truck. No shots fired. No broken vault. Just a group of friends with security jobs, radio headsets, a floor plan — and a key that should have been handed back.
It became the largest cash robbery in American history. And from day one, investigators knew exactly who they were looking for. But for almost two years, they couldn’t prove a thing. No fingerprints. No faces on camera. No money.
The robbers stayed patient. They didn’t buy mansions or flash cash. They burned bills that could be traced, hid the rest, and went back to ordinary life.
What finally brought them down wasn’t a confession or a camera. It was a tiny piece of amber plastic left on the floor of the loading dock.
And today, more than $10 million of the stolen money has still never been found.
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CHAPTERS
0:33 – Where the City’s Money Slept
2:00 – The Man Paid to Find Weaknesses
3:39 – Building the Perfect Plan
6:16 – The Perfect Thirty Minutes
11:55 – The Man Everyone Suspected
16:17 – The Fortune No One Could See
19:32 – The Fragment That Broke the Perfect Crime
24:15 – The Missing Millions
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Los Angeles Times (16.09.1997) — reporting on the Dunbar Armored robbery: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-09-16-mn-32541-story.html
Los Angeles Times (22.11.1997) — follow-up on the investigation: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-11-22-mn-56613-story.html
Wikipedia — Dunbar Armored robbery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar_Armored_robbery
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