Major robberies
During its first year of operation as the new Loomis Fargo & Company, the company was the target for two of the largest cash robberies ever committed on American soil.
In March 1997, employee Philip N. Johnson, on his own, stole $18.8 million from the Loomis Fargo armored car that he was driving. In the October 1997 Loomis Fargo Bank Robbery, employee David Scott Ghantt and accomplices stole $17.3 million from the Loomis Fargo Charlotte, North Carolina branch vault that he was supervising. The perpetrators of both robberies, and a significant majority of the cash, were later caught by law enforcement.
These two robberies, along with the unrelated $18.9 million Dunbar Armored robbery, which also occurred in 1997, were the first to surpass the previous holder of the title "largest cash robbery" in U.S. history, the $5 million cash portion (along with $0.9 million in the jewellery) of the Lufthansa heist of December 1978.
An additional robbery took place in March, 1999 while a Loomis semi truck was in transit from Sacramento, California, to San Francisco. During transit, one or more robbers boarded the truck, cut a hole in the roof, removed approximately $2.3 million, and exited the truck with the money, completely evading detection. The robbery was not discovered until after the truck arrived at its destination and no suspects were ever identified. The incident is now considered a cold case.[16]
The UK division of the company hit the headlines in February 2006 when armed robbers raided its cash center located in Tonbridge in Kent. The criminals made off with £53m in what is known as the Securitas depot robbery.[17]
The next month, a Securitas van in Warrington, Cheshire was also robbed by criminals who rammed it with a stolen tractor and subsequently made off with over half a million pounds.[18]
Again the same month, an armed gang robbed a Securitas van as it was unloading money at Gothenburg's Landvetter Airport in Sweden.[19]
On October 4, 2007, two armored truck guards working for Loomis were killed in a robbery in Northeast Philadelphia. Another man was wounded. A bank surveillance photo showed the gunman walking up to the two guards, shooting both of them execution-style, and running off with a bag containing ATM deposit envelopes. The man later confessed to the killings.[20][21]
On September 29, 2016, career thief Julio Nivelo stole a bucket containing gold bars worth $1.6 million from the back of an open and unguarded Loomis truck on a busy street in Manhattan, New York.[22][23]
