FBI Finally Solve Biggest Heist In American History

[Music] during the night of september 12 1983 one man carried out what was at the time the biggest cash robbery in american history millions of dollars were lifted as victor manuel garena devised and executed a plan to exploit wells fargo's skimpy security protocols but there was far more to this robbery than met the eye it spurred from a much grander international political motive with 16 more people involved behind the scenes some of the accused remained on the run for decades leading the fbi on a wild goose chase did the authorities eventually track them down how'd the successful heist play out and what was this overarching motivation let's find out to illustrate how these 17 individuals collaborated so successfully and carried out one of the most expensive cash heists to have ever occurred on u.s soil we need to understand how their victim the wells fargo company made it so easy so allow us to set the scene the location is west hartford connecticut here at 21 cobro drive in the cobro industrial park wells fargo had a depot in which it would store significant amounts of cash the general public remained rather clueless to the fact that they were living next to a metaphorical gold mine so wells fargo didn't mind allowing the west hartford depot to hold far more funds than most they were allowed to keep as much as 30 million dollars on site at the time the wells fargo branch was managed by jim mckeon jim wasn't dirty but he was inexperienced after only five months of guard duty the company promoted him to manager this was mistake number one the company also hired workers at minimum wage this was the case for then 25 year old victor manuel garena victor became jim's second in command and was eventually given responsibility to hold one of the cash vault's keys as it turns out that was mistake number two about two weeks before the robbery the first steps were put into place normally no vehicle other than the designated wells fargo transport vans were allowed inside the delivery van area it was too risky to let any other car near the vault for obvious reasons but knowing that his boss was inexperienced in lax garena tested the waters he rented an ugly duckling rent-a-car and told mckeon that he'd borrowed the van from a friend who would be mad if it was damaged so he needed to store it within the private parking lot even though this was a direct violation of company rules mckeon let it slide mistake number three fast forward to the night of september 12 1983 and everything was about to hit the fan inside mckeon was at his desk outside a 1973 buick lesabre that gerena had rented sat parked near the vault while mckeon was doing his regular paperwork to close out his shift gerena approached him and tricked him which led to mckeon looking down the barrel of his own weapon from that point mckeon as well as another on-shift co-worker were handcuffed gerena injected them with a mixture of aspirin and water to act as a sedative which proved too weak to actually take effect allowing the pair to watch as gerina carried out the entire crime using a cart while his co-workers alertly watched on gerena made multiple trips between the vault and the buick until a total of seven million seventeen thousand one hundred and fifty two dollars had been stolen that's over 18 million by today's standards then he fled the scene once the police arrived they assumed that the case was clear-cut since the identity of the perpetrator was known and there were unquestionable witnesses so instead of focusing on chasing gerena and finding him they focused on securing and investigating the crime scene however this crime wasn't clear cut there was much more going on behind the scenes than anyone realized because the police were prioritizing the scene of the crime they had unintentionally given gerena an opportunity to flee gerena linked up with two associates who were on standby at a motel these men were part of an organization called the machete wielders but we'll circle back to that in a moment he gave them the car load of cash as well as his legal id and then they split in different directions the associates drove north toward boston deliberately dropping the id along the way as a decoy meanwhile with counterfeit documents in hand gerena went south toward new york then was transported to mexico and flown to cuba subsequent searches of gerena's apartment and his call list came up empty with only his passport being recovered before too long victor manuel gerena was placed on the fbi's top 10 most wanted fugitives list and remained at large for 25 years gerena was merely the inside man and the face of the operation but there was much more at play behind the scenes 16 other men were linked to the crime a crime which had an intricate elaborate political motivation including the cost of car rental purchasing of fake documents time spent formulating a plan and arranging for international transport the gang could have easily spent upwards of ten thousand dollars but that's just an estimation now let's rewind for a second who were these so-called machete wielders the name is the rough english translation of the spanish moniker los meschateros which was a nickname for the boracuya popular a guerrilla group that sought puerto rican independence from the united states los meschiteros had claimed responsibility for a number of attacks against the united states armed forces and had a complex often bitter relationship with america and as it turns out the mother of inside man victor garena named gloria was an ardent supporter of independence for puerto rico with that in mind it didn't take much for los maciteros to recruit victor garena to their side allegedly the major purpose of this entire heist was to finance the operation of los meschiteros and fund their stance and action against the united states because of the fact that victor gerena fled to cuba many investigators believe that the northern caribbean nation was a player in the heist as well some people including a former cuban intelligence agent have claimed the government of fidel castro helped finance the wells fargo heist although we'll never know for sure over the following two years the fbi gathered its information meanwhile wells fargo was offering three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in reward for gerena's capture the fbi determined that victor gerena had planned to take credit for the heist on behalf of los meschiteros in a press event to be held on september 24th 1984. this piece of information pushed the fbi to focus their investigation on los meschiteros down in puerto rico and the alleged leader of the group filiberto ojita rios was among many now in the limelight two brothers avelino and norberto gonzalez were also under fire eventually after another year of investigative digging had passed and after the list of suspects had been carefully created and checked the fbi made their move during the morning of august 30th 1985 the fbi conducted unannounced raids without warrants in more than 30 separate locations in puerto rico everywhere from carolina to caguas bayamon to vegabaja and lukuyo to guainabo juan segarra palmer one of the leaders of the group was sentenced to 65 years in prison but had his sentence commuted by former u.s president bill clinton on that morning all but four of the suspects were arrested and charged with involvement in mashiteros activities and the wells fargo heist this was far bigger than simply arresting those responsible though as the fbi tried to prosecute the perpetrators puerto rican groups fought back in december of 1985 a puerto rican nationalist paper called libertad warned the american federal government that if the arrests continued they should begin preparing their cemeteries also because they intended to send mercenaries to american soil remember some of the suspects still remained at large filiberto ojeda rios had skipped bail in 1990 while awaiting trial as victor gerena and the gonzalez brothers norberto gonzalez and avelino gonzalez claudio remained on the run avelino gonzalez claudio was finally captured in 2008 and sentenced in 2010 to seven years in prison for his role as one of the robberies masterminds he pleaded guilty to conspiring to rob the wells fargo armored service corporation and to transporting the stolen money to mexico avelino's older brother norberto was seized in 2011 found living in the small southern puerto rican mountain town of caye while authorities did not disclose what led to the arrest they did admit that the 65 year old at the time had managed to escape capture for a quarter of a century by laying low and operating under an alias following the famous robbery once caught norberto was forced to face multiple charges that included bank robbery foreign and interstate transportation of stolen money and conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery he pleaded guilty to these charges as well as illegal possession of an automatic weapon as for filiberto ojeda rios the leader of los meschiteros he was taken down in a shootout in 2005 of the four arguably most involved suspects one is still yet to be found the planned centerpiece victor manuel gerena so as we know the money didn't remain in the usa just like victor gerena it was transported across borders out of reach of easy fbi discovery about 80 000 in what was believed to be the stolen cash was uncovered in searches across puerto rico and boston but the rest remained unaccounted for so what exactly was this seven million dollars used for the federal government contends that the group spent about one million dollars this was supposedly used to fund education food housing clothing and toys for children to the poorer puerto rican communities of the remaining 6 million 4 million was scattered across safety deposit boxes savings accounts and farmhouse sellers in puerto rico while the other two million allegedly ended up in cuba but why cuba because as we touched on earlier allegedly they were involved a former cuban intelligence agent named jorge masetti testified to u.s authorities that the cuban government provided fifty thousand dollars in seed money for the robbery mercedes claims to be involved in shipping some of the seven million dollar hall from the cuban embassy in mexico city to havana however cuban officials have labeled this story as entirely false let's take a step back for a moment the ideology driven thieves took the modern equivalent of 18 million dollars but once you factor in the cost of an ongoing 25-plus year investigation the overall cost grows tenfold on national institutes of health study from 2007 indicated the following as a result of the 23 million criminal offenses committed in 2007 victims lost close to 15 billion in order to solve these same crimes government agencies spent approximately 179 billion dollars so for every one dollar stolen it took 12 to solve the crime if we loosely apply this ratio to the wells fargo heist we can infer that the fbi spent 84 million dollars which is over 200 million when adjusted for inflation trying to catch the masterminds considering that the operations front man is still on the loose that number can only continue to grow the fbi offered a reward up to one million dollars for information leading directly to the arrest of victor manuel gerena even though the wells fargo heist was the most expensive cash robbery in american history at the time it no longer holds that title a man named alan pace led the 1997 dunbar armored trucking company robbery together with five childhood friends pace broke into the vault neutralized two guards on their lunch breaks and loaded 18.9 million dollars into a u-haul taking inflation into account that's a hefty 30 million dollar payday but that's a story for another day where do you think victor could be hiding let us know your thoughts in the comments don't forget to like this video subscribe to the channel and as always thank you so much for checking out the richest see you next time and have a great day

Channel: TheRichest

Views: 1,433,190

Rating: 4.8244209 out of 5

Keywords: thief, heist, robbery, usa, FBI, investigation, arrest, money, stolen, thieves, millions, cash, solved, cold case, most wanted, finally found, the richest, true crime

Id: e65X5Uo_5os

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020