MIAMI (AP) – The FBI has revealed how thieves made off with gold bars worth $4.8 million in a truck robbery on Interstate 95 last year, and it reads like a heist fit for Hollywood.
Agents say the armed robbers painstakingly prepared for the job, using high-tech gizmos including a GPS tracker and a remote-controlled pepper-spray launcher to subdue the drivers.
Agents identified the alleged ringleader as Adalberto Perez, 46. He was arrested this week at his home in the Miami suburb of Opa-Locka, Florida, almost exactly a year after the March 2015 robbery in Wilson County, North Carolina. Two accomplices remain at large.
It appears the case was cracked when a friend of Perez came forward just a few months ago. According to an FBI affidavit unsealed in federal court this week, the friend said Perez spent about a year preparing for the heist.
The target: a routine shipment of gold bars aboard a tractor-trailer sent by Miami-based Republic Metals to a processing plant in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, that serves jewelry makers in the Boston area.