New York City Gold Heist Update: Suspect Hiding In LA With Stolen Gold Flakes, Police Say

In the mid-1800s, people flocked to California, enticed by the rumors that better fortunes could simply be plucked from the rivers in the form of gold. The 2016 version of that gold rush, apparently, is snatching a bucket of gold off a truck in New York City and hightailing it to Los Angeles.

New York City police said the thief who grabbed an 86-pound bucket of gold flakes off of an armored truck in Manhattan Sept. 29 is hiding on the West Coast, according to a Wednesday report from the Associated Press. Police detectives said that they think he initially headed south to Orlando before making the trip west. He’s likely in the Los Angeles area.

A video of the gold heist that surfaced in November showed a man in a vest casually walk up to an opened Loomis armored and grab the large bucket full of gold and scurrying off in New York City. The man, in security footage later uncovered in the investigation, eventually puts the bucket full of heavy gold down for a moment on a street curb — near a different armored truck — before grabbing it and casually walking across the street. Passers-by in the city didn’t seem to notice the heist.

The gold was worth an estimated $1.6 million. It took roughly an hour to walk a half mile with the gold, but the assailant wasn’t caught because the guards didn’t notice the bucket was missing initially.

If the suspect, 53-year-old Julio Niveo, eludes law enforcement for the rest of his life, he will not be alone in that feat. Thieves stole 3.9 tons of gold from London’s Heathrow Airport in 1983, thinking they were stealing cash. They later found it was about $112 million worth of gold. Since it was an accident, according to Atlas Obscura, the heist was later called the “crime of the century.”