A trio of criminals from the Philadelphia Mint stole roughly $200,000 in dimes, and police in Pennsylvania are looking for them.
Around 6 a.m. on Thursday, the Philadelphia Police Department reported a brazen theft of an estimated 2,000,000 ten-cent coins.
Police were summoned to a Walmart parking lot in Northeast Philadelphia when a gang of “10 or more males” were allegedly seen on camera stealing goods from a semi-trailer that was parked there.
‘The 8th district officers arrived on scene and observed a tractor trailer with rear doors unlocked and numerous dimes scattered all over the Walmart parking lot,’ a police spokesperson told Metro.co.uk.
The truck was reportedly carrying about $750,000 worth of dimes and was bound for Florida. The driver had picked the shipment up from the Philadelphia Mint on Wednesday, but stopped to get some sleep at his home in Northeast Philadelphia before making the shipment.
Police originally estimated the thieves got away with about $100,000 in coins, but updated that sum total to $200,000 on Friday.
Dimes are required to weigh 2.268 grams, according to the US Mint. If police estimates are correct, the thieves had to haul 4.4 metric tons of coinage from the parking lot.
Thousands more dimes were scattered across the parking lot of the Philadelphia Mills shopping center. Footage from the scene showed police officers and other workers cleaning up the mess by hand and depositing the coins into plastic buckets.
Police identified two cars they said were related to the robbery – a white Chrysler 300 with tinted windows and a dark colored pickup truck.
It is unclear if the robbery is connected to any other thefts in the area. ‘There’s been a lot of cargo thefts here and there in Northeast Philly and South Philadelphia over the ensuing months where we’ve had lamb, chicken, TVs, refrigerators, et cetera,’ Captain John Ryan told CBS Philadelphia.