Soldiers recover millions in soggy cash from New Orleans
By Capt. Kevin Hynes
September 27, 2005
NEW ORLEANS (Army News Service, Sept. 26. 2005) — Soldiers of the Nebraska National Guard helped the U.S. Treasury Department rescue an estimated $50 to $100 million earlier this month from a flooded vault in New Orleans.
The soggy, stinking cash and coins were removed from a flooded Loomis, Fargo & Co. building in New Orleans by members of the National Guard Counter Drug Task Force who dubbed the mission “Ocean’s 13,” as a sequel to the recent heist movie.
The mission was top secret, said Spc. Tyler Miles, a member of the 134th Infantry Detachment (Long Range Surveillance) who participated.
Armored convoy rolls in secrecy
Few of the Guardsmen knew what they were being tasked to do until they were briefed just moments before departing, according to Miles and fellow Nebraska Soldier Sgt. Jonathan Panipinto. Their cell phones were confiscated before the briefing to ensure that what they were about to be told would be kept within their confines until after the mission had been carried out.
Panpinto said the Soldiers had some indications that something strange was up, though.
“People approached us and started asking questions about our (light armored vehicles.) Things like, ‘How much weight can these things carry?’ ‘Where is the balance point?’ things like that,” said Panipinto. “They didn’t identify themselves and we couldn’t get any straight answers. They just kept asking weird questions and taking measurements.”
“They just acted really strange,” he added.
The reason for the secrecy was simple. When New Orleans was flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, caught up in the fetid waters was the storage building for Loomis, Fargo and Co., a cash-handling company that handles armored car services. Bags upon bags of cash and coins had been left behind and needed to be recovered before other elements discovered their location.
Suspects seen casing armored car building
According to Lt. Col. Tom Brewer, commander of the multi-state Task Force LAV, the group was approached by U.S. Treasury officials to help secure a perimeter around the building and assist in hauling the cash away. Because of the nature of the mission, secrecy was paramount.
“Originally, the mission was supposed to take place on Sept. 11, but the water receded so much and so fast that people were noticed starting to case the building out,” said Miles. “They finally made the decision that they needed to move now.”
The facility, said Miles, was a non-descript brick building located slightly off of the interstate, surrounded by strands of rusting barbed wire, a few cameras and an inoperable electric gate.
“It was a building you’d never suspect,” said Panipinto. “It just looked like a truck depot.”
Although the water had receded significantly, the facility was still surrounded by the neck-deep toxic porridge of chemicals, oil, gasoline, sewage and other unknown elements. After arriving on scene, one team of Soldiers jumped into the water and broke open the gates and broke open the doors. A second group then hitched their LAVs to several surrounding armored cars and pulled them out of the way so that another LAV could back into the doorway.
Miles, who entered the building to assist with the movement, said the images he saw were simply amazing. “Papers were everywhere...receipt-like papers, all soaked,” said Miles. “It had a very distinct smell, like absolutely soft money. You know…money and paper.”
About four inches of foul-smelling black water still cover the floor, Miles said. Additional black water dripped from the ceilings and ran down the walls.
Breaching the vault
After entering the first room, a bank vault specialist quickly breached the inner vault door. Inside that approximately 20-foot by 20-foot room, the Guardsmen, U.S. Treasury officials and Loomis employees found multiple cages filled with stacks of dripping, film-covered bills.
Brewer described the scene to an Omaha World-Herald reporter as looking like “King Solomon’s mine – bags of (coins), money stacked everywhere.”
“Just seeing how much money was in there was astonishing,” Miles said.
After breeching the vault, the treasury and Loomis officials began to quickly load the fetid bricks of cash into plastic bags and then hauled the bags to the LAV. Because the cash had been submerged by the black water, which left a scummy black toxic film covering the bills, the cash was probably going to have to be destroyed.
Moving loot no easy chore
It took approximately three hours to completely empty the vault, said Miles. Because of the nature of the mission, the Soldiers were not allowed to touch any of the stacks of bills, he added.
“It was crazy chaotic,” said Miles, who helped move bricks of coins after the cash had been cleared out. “It took quite a while for them to get comfortable with me in the vault with them.”
“Once they did, I just pitched in and helped out,” he said.
The vault was extremely hot, he said, adding that humidity levels felt like “approximately 200 percent.”
“It felt like 130 degrees in there,” he said. “And you have all these guys moving bricks of money into plastic bags and then wheeling them out. It was kind of freaky because you got this eerie feeling…like all of a sudden out of nowhere you were going to get taken out. It was like being in a bad movie or something.”
“It was weird because you would look at these people and you just felt like you were moving money for the mafia,” he added.
After successfully emptying out the vault, the Guardsmen moved the treasure to Army Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks, better known at HEMTTs. Those trucks then hauled the bags to a highway were the cash was transferred to armored cars, which carried it out of New Orleans to an undisclosed location.
The total mission took about nine hours to complete.
Brewer told the Omaha World Herald that following the mission, many of the Soldiers started calling the mission, “Oceans 13” referring to the recent remake of the heist film “Oceans 11” and its sequel “Oceans 12.”
Miles said he took some extremely good memories with him from the mission, as well as a photo of him sitting on “one million dollars worth of quarters.”
“Every September 11th we’re going to remember moving all that money.”
(Editor’s note: Capt. Kevin Hynes serves with the Nebraska National Guard.)
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