PHILADELPHIA — More details have been released in the case of stolen dimes in Philadelphia earlier this year.
At first, it was reported that the alleged thieves took at least $100,000 worth of dimes, The Associated Press reported at the time.
Now, however, it was more than double that amount, according to court documents.
Federal officials said that several accused thieves took more than 2 million dimes, the AP reported.
The coins, which had been picked up at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia in April, were taken from the back of a tractor-trailer that had been en route to Miami. The truck’s driver had pulled into a parking lot to sleep before hitting the road when the alleged thieves broke into the trailer. The truck had been filled with $750,000 in dimes, which weighed about six tons.
Six alleged thieves were captured by surveillance video getting access to the truck in the middle of the night and loading the dimes into smaller bags that were then taken to a waiting truck, Philadelphia Police Capt. John Ryan said in April, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Some of the coins didn’t make it into the vehicle but were instead left scattered all over the parking lot.
So what did the feds say were done with the dimes after they left the parking lot?
According to documents recently unsealed, they were taken to coin machines in Maryland and converted into cash or taken to at least four banks in Philadelphia and deposited, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
One receipt that was filed with the legal paperwork showed a $990.44 payout for 9,904 dimes and four pennies, The New York Times reported.
But not all of the coins were converted to cash. The newspaper said that only a couple of thousand of dollars worth of dimes were changed, only a portion of the more than $234,500 taken in what the inquirer called a “coin caper.”
Federal officials have charged four men — Rakiem Savage, 25; Ronald Byrd, 31; Haneef Palmer, 30; and Malik Palmer, 32 — with conspiracy, robbery, theft of government money and other charges, the AP reported.
It wasn’t just the dimes that were allegedly stolen by the Philadelphia men.
The dime theft was part of a tractor-trailer robbery spree officials said was conducted by the same group of men in the city where various items were taken, including, frozen crab legs, shrimp, meat, beer, liquor and refrigerators, the Inquirer reported.
The New York Times reported that 60 cases of Jose Cuervo tequila and televisions were taken at one point, according to the court documents.
The indictment alleged that the group would pull the drivers from the tractor-trailer trucks before opening the trailers with bolt cutters. They would then offload the cargo into a white box truck and drive away, selling the items on the internet, the newspaper reported.
Dime theft charges by National Content Desk on Scribd