Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Largest Heist In US History - The Allen Pace III Story

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Allen Pace III, a security inspector at the Dunbar Armored facility in Los Angeles, used his insider knowledge to pull off the largest cash heist in U.S. history. Fired from his job the day before the robbery in September 1997, Pace recruited five childhood friends and devised an elaborate plan, memorizing security routines, bringing a camera to scope out the vault, and even sketching chalk diagrams of the building in parking lots during planning sessions. On the night of the heist, they tied up employees, broke into the vault, and escaped with nearly $18.9 million in untraceable cash.

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Alan working around all this cash. He's the kind of guy who really wants to be rich. So it's only a matter of time before he wants to take some of this cash. And that is exactly what happens. One day, in 1997, he comes up with an idea. Why not just rob his employer? And so he gets to work on this plan. He starts doing reconnaissance. He's like studying the building's floor plans. He's getting familiar with all the security camera locations.

He's figuring out how to get into the vault. He even allegedly brings a camera to work and starts taking pictures, pretending like, oh, I'm just like taking some photos of my work colleagues. When in reality, he's taking pictures. pictures of the layout. But all that recon is not enough to pull off a heist this big. Alan knows that he can't do this alone, so he recruits five of his friends to go along with him. And this operation is so rag tag, so low budget, he literally meets up with these five friends in a parking lot and he draws a diagram of the whole facility on the pavement using

street chalk. Like, you guys enter through this door and I'll enter through this door. It's crazy. But whatever. Now the plan is all coming together. And they set an official date that this is all going to go down. In the meantime, Alan is still working at this job at the Armored Depot. And he's getting up and he's going to work every day and he's just acting normal, trying not to make anyone suspicious. But as the date gets closer to Heist Day, something unexpected happens. One day, boom, he gets fired.

Allegedly he was playing a prank on his coworker and like messing with some of his work vehicle or something. I'm not really sure if that's true. Regardless, he gets fired. Now, this screws his whole robbery plan all up. Part of his plan was to use his set of company keys to get through some of the doors of the building. But now that he's fired, he's expected to turn those keys in right away. So how's he gonna get into the building now? Well, bro is not gonna give up quay. yet. He's still determined to rob this place and to get rich. So he comes up with a slightly different

plan. Instead of turning those company keys in right away, he hangs on to them for an extra day or so, and he moves the date of the robbery forward. He's like, guys, we need to pull off this heist tomorrow. And so tomorrow comes. And he and his crew, they get together. And I got to say, for just a gang of regular dudes, they've actually got all this planned out pretty well. I mean, keep in mind that none of them have ever been in trouble with the law before. Like this heist is actually their first attempt at crime. And so anyway, first, they go to a big house party in Long Beach and they're there and they're hanging out, they're talking to people, socializing, they're trying to make sure people

see them there because they're trying to establish an alibi. And after they're there for a few hours, they slip away from the party one by one. And they all put on black clothes and ski masks and they grab their weapons and they They all get into a U-Haul truck that they had rented. Then they head over to the Armored Depot. Once they get there, Alan uses his key to get into the building. Now, I told you they got all this planned out pretty well. Alan actually made sure to time all this so that they would be breaking into the place around the same time.

All the employees there are taking a meal break so that all the workers are in the cafeteria at the same time. That way they won't have to hunt them all down one by one. And so this is where shit. really goes down. Because then, boom, Alan and his goons bust into the cafeteria and they're like, this is a robbery. Nobody fucking move. And they get all of the employees to lie down on the floor

and they duct tape their hands and their feet. Then Alan finds the supervisor and he takes that supervisor's set of keys which open the main vault. So then he goes and he opens the vault and he and the goons, they start taking the cash out and they load it into the U-Haul. These guys fill this truck with 18.0.

million dollars worth of cash, which in today's dollars, it's about $38 million. Damn. Once they're done, just to be cautious, they smash all the security cameras and they steal the tapes that have the evidence recorded on them. Then they all get in the U-Haul and they leave. These guys got the whole heist done in about 30 minutes, which that's not bad for a bunch of amateurs. However, they're not quite done yet, because then they go back to an apartment, they change

back into their normal non-robbery clothes, and they go back to that big house party where they were at earlier, and they start hanging out to make it look like, yo, we never left, which is actually pretty smart, you know, to solidify their alibi. Meanwhile, the employees back at the Armored Depot, they're eventually able to free themselves and call the police. And so police come and they investigate. And after looking it all over, they're pretty sure this was an inside job. It was just too sophisticated and the robbers were way too knowledgeable of the layout of this place for it not to be an employee or a former employee. Not only that, one of the employees who was tied up during the robbery, he apparently recognized Alan's voice and he suspects that he might be involved.

So now police are looking into Allen and they start monitoring him to see if he or any of his friends start flashing money around like an idiot. But here's the thing. Alan and his goons don't flash a bunch of money around. They barely spend any of it right away. Instead, they just wait. They wait for it all to blow over. And six months go by. And now they finally feel like it's safe to start spending

and laundering the $18.9 million they got. And like some of them are buying homes at foreclosures and then renting them out. They're buying cars, but you know, used cars and they're buying them with cash. They even set up fake companies to run the money through. I'm telling you, for a bunch of amateurs, these guys are actually pretty smart, and it looks like they might even get away with this. Until, two years go by. And all these guys

are still in the clear, and they've each got a cut of their money, and none of them have been arrested. No one is really being investigated at this point, because police don't have any real evidence against any of them. But then, one of the goons finally screws up. Because one day he's buying some real estate to use in his money laundering scheme, and of course he's paying for it with cash. And so he's there at the real estate office or whatever, and he hands over a bunch of money to the real estate agent. Then he leaves. And so the real estate agent is counting this money and he gets to one of the stacks of cash and he sees that it still has the paper wrapper around the middle that says Dunbar armored on it, which is the name of the

Armored Depot that Alan and his goons robbed. And so this real estate agent calls the police and he reports it. And so, bam, police go and they arrest the goon. Now this goon, he immediately flips on everyone. And so bam, they arrest Alan. Here's his mugshot. And also they arrest the other goons. Here's a bunch of their mugshots.

And Alan gets sentenced to 24 years in prison. One of the goons gets sentenced to 17 years in prison. while the rest of the goons they got between eight and ten years in prison.