On This Day In 1985: Lower West Side Wells Fargo Heist Dwarfed Lufthansa
On this day in 1985, four armed robbers made off with $7.8 million in cash from a Wells Fargo Co. terminal on Manhattan's Lower West Side, netting a larger haul than the crooks aligned with the Luchese family who in December 1978 robbed a Lufthansa cargo building of around $6 million ($5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry). In both robberies, much of the loot was never recovered. Beansie in middle. On April 29, 1985, four ski-masked bandits ambushed four employees of a Wells Fargo facility as they opened the firm's vault to prepare for the day's business. They made their escape in a bright red armored truck that they left abandoned in a parking lot beneath the Brooklyn Bridge approach on the Lower East Side. Wells Fargo offered a $350,000 reward for their arrest and conviction. According to police, the four robbers used drills and sledgehammers.to crack their way through two cinder-block walls to access first the Merrill Lynch depot, then the Wells Fargo t