Posted on 02/04/2005 10:54:43 AM PST by crushelits
The search for $180,000 in missing nickels ended in the back yard of a Miami-Dade County house today.
A joint task force including the DEA, FBI (news - web sites), Immigration and Customs Enforcement and detectives from the Miami-Dade County Police Department, found the nickels buried in the back yard of a home in an area near Miami known as the Redlands.
Law enforcement officials searched the home this morning and found nothing. They searched a smaller house behind the main residence and reportedly found 88 plants believed to be marijuana.
When agents went over the back yard with metal detectors, they hit on the more than 3 million nickels. Officials said the coins were buried in a wooden box, covered in a thick clear plastic tarp buried in a 4-foot deep hole. The coins were still inside Federal Reserve (news - web sites) bags, according to police.
The nickels left the Federal Reserve Bank in New Jersey Dec. 17. Three days later the empty truck was found in Fort Pierce. The driver, Angel Mendoza was missing. Police have still not found Mendoza. They believe he is out of the country.
Police are interviewing another man about the plants they found.
He may have been being sarcastic in this instance, but such things have happened in the past.
Do you know how much $200 in nickels weighs?
4Kg at 5g a nickel
There's a reason why anyone smart enough to be a counterfeiter, especially in the old days before computerized copy machines, NEVER made anything smaller than a 20$ denomination bill.
Too much work to get rid of it, considering the return and possibility of capture when the bills started turning up in an area.
Stealing nickels has got to be the dumbest theft yet.
Which is why the government enforces the law and not private enterprise. Most armed robers, even bank robers, only walk out with a few hundred bucks. What do you figure it costs to catch them?
If we did on a cost/benefit analysis, we wouldn't even bother looking for them. That is not such a good idea, I think.
Try Mexico. I guess he was just hauling money for the feds, doing a job that a law-abiding US citizen wouldn't do.
Er...so to speak (g!).
somebody has problems with reality.
He was hoping to fund the DU website
I believe it was a semi.
What a story.
MENSA not on the perp's resume....
THey should have let the bad guys keep it. Especially since it cost $800,000 to recover the stolen money.
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