The Dunbar Armored Robbery: Allen Pace III and an $18.9 Million Heist

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Allen Pace III was paid to find weaknesses in the Dunbar Armored depot on Mateo Street in downtown Los Angeles. As a regional safety inspector, he photographed the interior, drew floor plans, memorized every camera position, and learned that the main vault was left open on busy Friday nights. Then he was fired for tampering with company vehicles. The next night, September 12, 1997, he let himself in with his own keys, along with five childhood friends, and carried out what stood as the largest cash robbery in U.S. history for nearly three decades.

This episode traces the heist from the staged alibi at a house party to the dark staff cafeteria where guards were ambushed one by one on their lunch breaks. In 30 minutes the crew loaded $18.9 million into a U-Haul without firing a shot. The harder problem came afterward: how to spend a fortune in cash without being noticed, and how long six people could stay careful.

• Pace knew which bags held the highest denominations and targeted non-sequential bills that would be nearly impossible to trace.
• Investigators suspected an inside job at once, but the only physical clue left at the depot was a fragment of plastic taillight lens from a U-Haul truck.
• Pace imposed a six month ban on spending, then paid attorney David Matsumoto and his office manager a million dollars each to launder cash through real estate, front companies, and fake W-2 forms.
• Two years later, Eugene Lamar Hill Jr. paid a real estate broker with cash still bound in its original currency straps. Records showed he had rented a U-Haul on the day of the robbery, and he named the crew.
• Pace was sentenced to 24 years and released in October 2020. Only about $5 million was ever recovered, leaving roughly $13.9 million unaccounted for.