The wild $30 million cash heist from a Los Angeles warehouse Easter Sunday was apparently pulled off by a top-notch group of criminals — and so clean that it could go unsolved, an expert says.
“This is a group that would have to have a lot of prior experience,” Scott Selby, a Harvard-educated lawyer and co-author of “Flawless,” a book about the famous Antwerp Diamond Heist, told The Post.
“It’s like if you were a gymnast, you know, by the time you’re world-quality, you’ve already done a lot of work,” Selby said of the type of thieves who seem to have targeted the GardaWorld facility in the Sylmar neighborhood last week.
The polished criminals snuck into the site through its roof and accessed a safe without setting off any alarms, authorities said.
They made off with $30 million in cold, hard cash — which would have weighed 660 pounds in $100 bills, Selby said.
“We know they’re good because they got in and out without anybody noticing. And so far, there’s nothing obvious that leads the LAPD and FBI to know who they are,” the expert said.
“It’s very possible that this case could go unsolved, given that level of skill involved with this, the fact that already there’s been no compelling leads.
“And also just the nature of what they stole,” Selby said. “I mean, you can’t work backwards. If someone sees a highly unusual diamond, they remember, ‘Hey, I know that stone.’ But nobody’s gonna be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that used $100 bill.’ ”
As for whether the heist — which is one of the largest in Los Angeles history — could have been an inside job, Selby said that’s possible.
“If you define an inside job as an insider giving key information, that could very much be the case,” he explained. “The big question I would have if I were the LAPD or the FBI is what kind of information would the thieves have needed to do this job.
“Thirty million — is that the usual amount that they have there? Was there something special about this Easter Sunday, or is it just a holiday weekend that they decided to hit the place? Was there a particular weakness in that part of the roof?” he said.
The heist immediately drew comparisons to other famous Los Angeles robberies — including one just two years ago, when robbers made off with up to $100 million in jewels and other valuables from an armored big rig that was traveling back from a gem show. That mega-theft remains unsolved.
Selby said it would be even easier for the GardaWorld thieves to make their spoils disappear, adding to the notion that the most recent heist could baffle investigators for years to come.
“These guys, they have cash, and these are used bills that have been picked up from, you know, supermarkets, convenience stores,” he told The Post. “So they have cash, and since it’s not new, we’re not talking about sequential serial numbers. It’s just straight-up cash.”
The GardaWorld theft also reminded Selby of the 1972 United Bank robbery, which took place at a strip mall in Laguna Niguel, Calif.
“It’s a similar MO: They went in through the roof, they managed to avoid setting off the alarms, they took off with the cash,” he explained.
“And these crooks were really clever. They cleaned everything up. But they made one mistake,” Selby said of the old bank heist. “No one ran the dishwasher [at their safehouse]. … Cops fingerprinted the dishes, they found a name.”
While the Sylmar heist appears highly expert, solving it could come down to a similar mistake, Selby said — and be helped along by 2024 technology.
“Now it’s a whole different game, we have touch DNA,” he noted. “Just the smallest slip-up, and you could get DNA from one of these criminals.”
