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LOS ANGELES (CN) — Seven Southern California men were charged with stealing $100 million worth of gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds and luxury watches from a Brink’s truck three years ago in what is considered the largest jewelry heist in U.S. history.
The charges were announced Tuesday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, which had filed a grand jury indictment against the seven defendants under seal last week.
Two of the men were arrested, and one is in prison in Arizona on an unrelated conviction, according to the announcement. The status of the other four defendants wasn’t specified.
Some of the stolen jewelry was recovered during the execution of search warrants on Monday, the government said.
According to the indictment, the accused had been scouting an international jewelry show in San Mateo, California, in July 2022. They spotted an armored Brink’s semitruck leaving the event on the evening of July 10, 2022, loaded with 73 bags with millions of dollars of jewelry.
They followed the truck for about 300 miles as it made its way south across California to deliver the valuables to another jewelry show in Pasadena, California.
When the truck drivers took a rest break in Lebec at 2 a.m. on July 11, the accused robbers broke into the truck and made off with 24 of the bags, containing about $100 million in jewelry.
Afterward, the defendants took their haul to the East Hollywood neighborhood in LA, according to the indictment, and deactivated the cell phones they had been using during the robbery.
Brink’s, in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court for breach of contract against the various jewelry businesses who hired the company to transport their merchandise, said one of the drivers had gone inside the Flying J Truck Stop in Lebec to get food, leaving a second driver asleep inside the truck.
When the first driver returned to the truck about 27 minutes later, he saw that the red plastic seal around the trailer was cut and lying on the ground. He then inspected the trailer’s rear lock and found that it had been cut away.
Brink’s accused the jewelry businesses of undervaluing the merchandise it was transporting. The pickup manifests for the missing shipments declared a total value of just $8.7 million, according to the security company, which seeks to prevent the jewelers from claiming more recovery than the declared value of their stolen goods.
Some of the seven accused Brink’s jewelry robbers had previous experience intercepting cargo shipments.
They are also charged with stealing $240,573 worth of Samsung electronics from a shipment in Ontario, California, on March 2, 2022, and robbing a box truck driver of $57,377 worth of Apple AirTags. One of the robbers brandished a knife and threatened the driver, the Justice Department said.
On May 25, 2022, the defendants attempted to steal from a truck at a Fontana rest stop using a crowbar to break in. When that failed, they successfully stole approximately $14,081 worth of Samsung electronics from another interstate shipment in Fontana, according to prosecutors.
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