Easy Money

"Robbers was here"

Criminal records are made to be broken. In 1974 robbers got away with a $4 million cash haul at the Purolator Security warehouse in Chicago. That record stood until 1978, when $5.8 million in money and jewels disappeared from a Lufthansa cargo hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Last week that high mark fell once more, and again the record was set in New York City.

The gang of at least three thieves that hit the Bronx-based Sentry Armored Car Courier Co. went about their business with remarkable efficiency. Near midnight two of the bandits, dressed in ski masks and gloves, climbed onto the roof of the two-story Sentry building. Using metal-cutting tools, they sawed a 2-ft. hole in the roof and lowered themselves down a rope. Armed with a double-barrel shotgun, they gagged and handcuffed the only guard on duty. A crowbar was used to break the locks off the metal door to the basement "money room." There, some $30 million in cash and food stamps sat in bags behind a floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence. The robbers clipped through the fence, took ten to twelve bags packed with untraceable $100 and $50 bills, plus close to $100,000 in traceable food stamps, and fled to their waiting van. Left behind was a message scrawled on a dusty wall mirror: ROBBERS WAS HERE.

Police and the FBI immediately suspected an inside job. One of two electronic alarms that should have alerted a nearby 24-hour central security station was inexplicably turned off. The thieves seemed suspiciously knowledgeable about the company's security operations, locating with ease a switch that opened the building's garage door. At week's end, authorities were poring over the records of 200 past and present Sentry employees. Still at large were the robbers, and still missing was their loot. Latest count: a staggering $10.4 million.