$600,000 in Cash Stolen During Million-Dollar Heist Found Buried in Backyard of California Home
— -- About $600,000 in cash stolen during a million-dollar armored car heist in Los Angeles last year was recently found buried in the backyard of a home in Fontana, Calif., according to the FBI.
Several FBI agents and Los Angeles Police Department detectives showed up at the home with a search warrant Wednesday morning after receiving a tip from an informant, FBI Spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told ABC News.
Law enforcement officials immediately began digging in the backyard and found the $600,000 in the form of $100 and $20 bills inside a blue Tupperware bin, Eimiller said. The current residents of the home were cooperative, and no arrests were made, she added.
The home where the $600,000 was found belongs to one of the men accused of stealing over $1 million in June of 2014, Eimiller said. She added that the FBI was not publicly sharing which of the three defendants in the case lived at the home.
The million-dollar heist happened on June 27, 2014, when Cesar Yanez, 37, and his partner Aldo Esquivel Vega, 28, were supposed to be transporting a multi-million dollar shipment of cash for Bank of America in an armored car, according to a news release from the Central District of California U.S. Attorney's office. Yanez and Vega were employed for armored car service Loomis at the time.
Yanez and Vega stopped in a parking lot, where Vega opened the rear doors of the car and allowed Yanez to access the cash storage area, the U.S. Attorney's office said. It was alleged that Yanez removed $1,086,000 in cash and placed it into a trash can that was later picked up by his wife, Leticia Yanez. A woman named Jovita Medina Guzman later delivered some of the stolen money to Vega, prosecutors added.
Cesar Yanez, Leticia Yanez and Aldo Vega were charged with conspiracy to commit bank larceny and bank larceny last November, and Cesar Yanez and Jovita Guzman were charged with possession of bank larceny proceeds, the U.S. Attorney's office announced last November, according to federal court records. Guzman was also charged as an accessory for attempting to hinder and prevent her co-defendants’ apprehension, trial, and punishment.
During a trial last year, Cesar Yanez pleaded guilty, and he is currently serving a nearly five-year sentence in federal prison, court records show.
Vega, Guzman and Leticia Yanez are still awaiting trial and have entered not guilty pleas, according to Justin Rhoades, the lawyer prosecuting the case in federal court.
