Police are searching for thieves who they say stole an estimated two million dimes worth $200,000 from a tractor-trailer in a Walmart parking lot in Philadelphia.
A truck driver who picked up $750,000 worth of dimes from the Philadelphia Mint on Wednesday parked his truck in a Walmart parking lot and went home to sleep before a long drive to Florida. When he went to get the truck the next morning, he found the trailer door open and dimes scattered all over the ground, according to a report by WPVI.
“They were trying to cross-load the dimes into other things. There are dimes all over the parking lot,” Philadelphia Police Department Captain Jack Ryan told reporters.
It remains unclear if the driver will be charged, WPVI said, but Ryan noted that leaving a truck overnight to get some sleep before a long drive the next day is “common practice.”
“This is common practice — to pick up a load going to Florida and go home for the night, get to sleep, and get on the road in the morning,” Ryan said.
It remains unknown if the thieves initially knew what was inside the tractor-trailer, as Philadelphia detectives noted that it is not unusual for people to break into trailers just to see what is inside and that all different types of goods have been stolen in the past.
“We’ve had lamb, chicken, TVs, refrigerators, etc… alcohol,” Ryan said.
The Walmart parking lot has cameras, allowing investigators to develop a suspect description.
Police say that about ten men made off with the dimes in two vehicles, one of which was a white Chrysler 300, the other described as a “dark-colored pickup truck,” according to a report by the New York Times.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Officer Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department, told the New York Times.
One glaring question that puzzles the police department is how the thieves plan to cash in such an enormous quantity of dimes.
“That’s the weird part about this,” Torres said. “How do they expect to use it?”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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