Miami Heist: The Brink's Money Plane Job's Messy Aftermath

In the fall of 2005, Karls Monzon’s childhood friend and neighbor Onelio Diaz approached him with a proposal. Diaz worked as a security guard for Brink’s at Miami International Airport. Every day, he explained, a Lufthansa jet from Frankfurt landed at the airport carrying bricks of $50 and $100 bills in bags. The shipments were from Germany’s second-largest bank, Commerzbank, and averaged between $80 million and $100 million per flight.

Brink’s employed Diaz and a few other guards to escort the bills from the tarmac to a warehouse at the airport perimeter to clear customs. The guards would examine the bags for tampering or tears and drive them in armored cars to the Miami branch of the Federal Reserve, about four miles away. The whole process took about two hours.