2 million dimes, crab legs, Jose Cuervo among loot stolen from Philadelphia crime spree

Four men face a slew of criminal charges after federal authorities said they robbed a series of trucks in the Philadelphia area, including one carrying a load of Federal Reserve coins.

According to an Associated Press article, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently dropped an indictment against four Philadelphia men who allegedly broke into and robbed several trucks in the Philadelphia area before stealing $1,000 worth of freshly minted dimes on April 13 stole just over $234,000 a year.

The suspected thieves reportedly left coins scattered across the roadway as they quickly tried to pack up and move some of the cargo, which weighed more than six tons in total, from the truck to their getaway van, according to the AP. Federal authorities said the four suspects they arrested for stealing the dimes also robbed several other trucks in the area around the same time. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that several other cargo loads of shrimp, frozen crab legs, meat, beer and liquor were believed to have been stolen by the following suspects:

25-year-old Rakiem Savage, 31-year-old Ronald Byrd, 30-year-old Haneef Palmer and 32-year-old Malik Palmer, all of whom reside in the Philadelphia area, have been charged with a long list of crimes related to this incidents, according to a recently unsealed federal indictment. Charges brought included robbery, theft of government funds, conspiracy and more.

The Philadelphia Inquirer said all of the crimes involved a similar modus operandi in which the men found abandoned trucks in parking lots or rest areas, forcibly removed the drivers from their trucks and used bolt cutters to gain access to the cargo, which was then removed and placed on top loading a white box truck. The stolen goods were later offered for sale through various internet-based media.

Authorities alleged Savage stole 60 cases of Jose Cuervo from a truck in March. After this incident, authorities claimed that six refrigerators had been stolen just two weeks before the penny theft by Savage and the Palmers. During this incident, the suspects reportedly pulled the driver from his vehicle and left him underneath their white box truck while they unloaded and reloaded the stolen refrigerators. In addition, following the April 13 penny theft, messages from Byrd were sent over the Internet to several others explaining that Byrd had stolen shrimp for sale, the market price of which was not immediately clear.

Philadelphia police told the Inquirer that they did not believe the accused thieves knew what was in the truck on April 13 when they came across just over $750,000 in coins fresh from the Federal Reserve came. Surveillance video showed six men wearing gray hoodies approaching the truck, which police said had stopped in a parking lot to rest on its way to Miami. The men used bolt cutters to break open the back of the truck and began loading the pennies onto their box truck. Surveillance video also showed the men stealing recycling bins on their way out of the area, presumably to help unload the stolen coins.

The AP article states that after the penny theft on April 13, thousands of dollars in coins were converted into cash at Coinstar ATMs in Maryland. Equally large deposits, amounting to dimes, were also made at at least four bank branches in Philadelphia, according to a federal indictment obtained by the Associated Press. However, the value exchanged at the coin machines represented only a small percentage of the value of the total dime shipment, meaning that the majority of the dimes remained unaccounted for at the time of writing.

“If you have a lot of dimes at home for some reason,” Philadelphia police spokesman Miguel Torres told The New York Times in April, “this is probably not the time to cash them in.”

If convicted on all charges, the four suspects could face decades behind bars together, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer article. Legal representatives for all four men did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press or Philadelphia Inquirer. All four men were reportedly still in FBI custody but were scheduled to appear before a judge on Monday.