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Police responded to alarm around time of $30 million LA heist, but thieves were undetected

Richard Winton and Daniel Miller, Los Angeles Times on

Published in News & Features

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Police Department responded to three separate alarms at GardaWorld’s Sylmar cash storage facility on the day that thieves stole as much $30 million from its vault during the biggest heist in the city’s history.

Despite the officers’ presence at the property in the early hours of Easter Sunday — including around the time it is believed the sophisticated burglary was carried out — the criminals remained undetected, according to three law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation of the incident.

During at least one of the responses by a patrol car, GardaWorld was alerted, according to the officials, but the Montreal-based security services company did not register the intrusion.

The Los Angeles Times has previously reported that GardaWorld did not learn of the crime until opening the vault the following day, April 1. It wasn’t until then, officials said, that LAPD investigators were notified that a substantial amount of money had been taken.

The sequence of events, partly disclosed in an LAPD call-for-service log obtained by the Times, raises questions about the security GardaWorld maintained at the Roxford Avenue property, which is used to process and store cash for the company’s L.A.-area customers. The timeline also reveals details of the complex crime, which is believed to have been carried out by a crew that breached the one-story building via its roof.

Jeffrey Zwirn, a longtime security consultant, said the success of the heist appeared to be the result of “a systemic failure.”

 

“The physical and the electronic security appear to have had a deficiency that was either not checked by the alarm company, and/or the security command center and/or the security director designated with making sure the system was more than adequate in light of its high-risk environment.”

GardaWorld did not respond to requests for comment.

According to the police log, the LAPD responded to 13 alarm calls at the building in the year prior to the heist, and all of them were determined to be false alarms. Notably, one occurred just before 11:30 p.m. on March 30, the night before the heist. A patrol car arrived at the warehouse minutes later and deemed it a false alarm.

Another alarm rang at the building on at 4:36 a.m. on Easter, according to the log. Hours later, the log shows, a police car was dispatched to the property, a supervisor was notified and a report was written. The log does not indicate what the police found. However, a resident at the neighboring Tahitian Mobile Home Park previously told the Times that FBI agents visited her the day after the burglary and asked if she “saw or heard anything suspicious around 4 a.m.” on Easter. (The woman said she was asleep at the time and did not.)

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