Four men have been charged for allegedly swiping $234,500 in dimes from a tractor-trailer — the latest in a slew of oddball heists in which the crew has been accused of swiping truckloads of beer, tequila and even a trove of frozen shrimp.
A truck driver in April was hauling a cargo of dimes valued at $750,000 from the US Mint in Philadelphia to the Federal Reserve bank in Miami when he pulled into a Walmart parking lot in Northeast Philly to sleep, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
During the night, four thieves made off with a hefty portion of the six-ton shipment of dimes, leaving hundreds of thousands of the coins scattered across a Philly roadway as they moved millions of dimes from the tractor-trailer — which they forced open with bolt cutters — to their own white box truck, per The Inquirer.
In the weeks after the theft, thousands of the dimes were converted into dollars at Coinstar machines in Maryland, and in at least four different banks across suburban Philadelphia, according to an indictment unsealed Friday obtained by The Post.
However, the amount of laundered coins identified in the court documents adds up to roughly $5,200 — a tiny fraction of what authorities say the men stole.
It’s unclear what happened to the rest of the loot.
The indictment identified the thieves as Rakiem Savage, 25, Ronald Byrd, 31, Haneef Palmer, 30, and Malik Palmer, 32, who are all now in FBI custody and facing charges of conspiracy, robbery and theft of government money.
Surveillance footage showed one of the group’s getaway cars stopping to steal nearby recycling bins, presumably to use to carry their heavy loot, authorities told The Inquirer.
Each pallet of dimes weighed roughly 2,500 pounds, and the thieves broke open as many as five pallets.
Police have said that they don’t believe the driver was complicit in the theft, according to The Inquirer.
The men have been involved in a series of similar crimes, making off with unwieldy hauls of frozen seafood, beer and liquor from other trucks whose drivers stopped in the Philadelphia region to get some sleep amid their cross-country journey.
Two weeks before the dime heist, Savage and the Palmers stole six refrigerators off a trailer, and eight days later Byrd attempted to sell off frozen shrimp he looted, The Inquirer reported.
Back in March, Savage stole 60 cases of Jose Cuervo off a truck.
In some of these robberies, the men forced the drivers out of their trucks, and in one instance they had a driver lie under their white box truck while they made off with his cargo.
Representatives for the Philadelphia Police Department did not immediately respond to noti.group’s request for comment.
Savage, Byrd and the Palmers could not be reached for comment.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
