The employee of a bank planned the perfect flight of 4.3 million USD: he had no checkpoint in Mexico

It could be done, he thought. Of course, there was security at the bank, but they were few –only cameras, not armed guards. With a careful game plan, strategic lies and the right moment, Gerardo Adan Cazarez Valenzuela he realized that he could leave the KeyBank branch, where he was working in Anchorage, with millions in cash.

It was in June 2011 when Cázarez began to change course according to his plan. Although his trial was affected by cocaine addiction and alcohol at that time, He laid the foundations meticulously.

On July 29, 2011, Cazarez told his boss that he wanted to stay late to organize a social event dedicated to ice cream. When Cazarez, an Alaskan man in his twenties, wore a red shirt and a black suithe was alone in the bank, he entered the vault, as federal agents would do in court documents. He charged $ 4.3 million in cash into three boxes, removed them from the building in a cart and put them in his car.

Before leaving, Cazarez placed a timer in the safe so that it would not open until six days later. At that time, he had planned to be safe on the border with Mexico. When he left the car park, a private rental plane was already waiting for him in the first leg of his trip south.

But Cazarez has never made his great escape. He was arrested by Mexican authorities and sent to a Mexican prison under conditions described in a recent letter to a federal judge, calling it "the dirtiest place you can imagine". Cazarez was sentenced Monday to an additional 10 years in prison in the United States, according to a press release from the Ministry of Justice.

In his letter to the judge, Cazarez, now 34 years old, said that he had executed his plan to pay for the medical care of his father, who is already dead. But federal authorities say revenge in the workplace has also played a role. Cázarez feared that KeyBank would cancel his job and leave him unemployed. And an unsolved problem still hangs over the case: There is still $ 500,000 missing.

"Obviously, I stink to be a criminal and I know that any illegal activity will bring me back to prison", Cazarez wrote to the judge, imploring his grace.

Cazarez's plan was meticulously detailed and full of insights into the size of a movie. "The only thing I know how to make a living is to work hard and excel in everything I wanted to do", wrote the judge.

Days before flying $ 4.3 million, trained new employees so as to eliminate the need for two people to access the safe, a move that set the stage for his solo flight.

One day before stealing money, Cazarez took $ 30,000 from the safe to pay for his hired plane. After pocketing its $ 4.3 million, the plane flew to Cazarez from Anchorage to Seattle, according to court documents. There, as he had planned, he found his girlfriend again. Together, they bought a Ford Fusion. Cazarez also asked a taxi driver to buy a gun, and the taxi driver He connected an AK-47, a firearm and ammunition for $ 4,000.

The illegal couple drove to California and then planned to go to his uncle's home in Mexico, Cazarez. The uncle suggested that Cazarez and his girlfriend take a bus instead of driving on difficult Mexican roads. The couple went to Mexico to Tijuana, left the Fusion, bought tickets for Sonora, Mexico, and boarded the bus on August 1, 2011.

The next day, the bus was stopped by Mexican authorities at a checkpoint in the country. The pbadengers were invited to disembark with their luggage. Inside the Cazarez bag, They discovered millions of American dollars.

"By the time they caught me, I felt a great weight coming out of my shoulders"Cazarez would write to the judge later. "Even though I did not know what to expect, I knew everything was the best."

Then criminal charges were laid in Mexico "Analogous to money laundering and illegal possession of firearms for the smuggling of cash and firearms into Mexico", according to federal authorities.

But there was also a problem with the cash account.

Mexican authorities have only discovered $ 3.8 million in their bags. After Cazarez served his prison sentence in Mexico and was extradited to the United States in September 2018, the missing half million dollars would be controversial. When he pleaded guilty to stealing bank funds last January, prosecutors wanted to know what had happened to the money.

According to Cázarez, the money was gone, given to his father for medical treatment, and then stolen. The defendant did not explain in detail how the money was taken from his father.

"The vast majority of the money I took was recovered", wrote the judge. "In addition to what I spent, most of what was left was left to my father to pay for his medical expenses, and he was stolen before he had a chance and he pbaded away, so there is no easy way to recover what's missing, because, as far as I know, there's nothing left"

Prosecutors allege that Cazarez has in fact hidden the 500,000 dollars in the state of Washington in case you get caught.

In Monday's ruling, the judge stated that the defendant had shown a lack of frankness with the court for the missing money, convicting Cazarez to a decade in prison without credit for the time that he was in Mexico.

"If a random search had not been carried out at an internal Mexican checkpoint, the defendant would now take margaritas and profit from his stolen cash millions", said federal prosecutors in a lawsuit.