Textbook Holdup

The four employees who work the unenviable night shift at Wells Fargo's fortress-like depot in lower Manhattan reported for duty at 1 a.m. Two were guards carrying service revolvers; two were unarmed. Their job was to open the vault and load an armored car with money bags destined for the Federal Reserve Bank. One of the four, who knew the first half of the vault's combination, executed his part of the routine. Then another, who knew the second part of the combination, opened the safe, which contained about $20 million. It was 1:20 a.m.

When the heavy door was ajar, four masked men with handguns suddenly appeared and ordered the Wells Fargo employees to disarm and close their eyes. The gunmen handcuffed the four employees and began heaping the cash into a nearby Wells Fargo truck. Within minutes they had stashed $7,896,000, leaving some $12 million behind. The truck was later found abandoned under the Brooklyn Bridge. Said New York City Chief of Detectives Richard Nicastro: "They were very calm. And they did it in a very cool and collected manner."

The Wells Fargo robbery last week is one of the largest cash heists in U.S. history, the record being the $11 million stolen from a Sentry armored car in the Bronx in 1982. The theft is one of several holdups in the past few years for the once impregnable security- and cash-transfer company. Only one day after the New York stickup, two masked men with revolvers filched $106,000 from a Wells Fargo guard in Miami Lakes, Fla.

The Manhattan gunmen apparently broke into the Wells Fargo building through the wall of an adjacent building, using sledgehammers and other tools to create a 35-in.-high opening. There were no guards on the premises, and they waited in the Wells Fargo executive offices on the second floor. Though the depot has an elaborate warning system, the robbers set off no alarms. Police investigators suspect that the thieves probably had inside information. The FBI says there are "concrete leads." Asked why the thieves left so much cash in the vault, Nicastro replied, "Maybe they got tired of lifting."