01x03 - The Money Plane: Part 1

[bunniefuu]

Karl wasn't from the streets,

he was actually a good, hardworking man.

He meant well.

Streetwise, though? Definitely not.

Karl wasn't about that life.

So, when Karls came to me about this idea

he had, I was really shocked.

But my flaw is

my family.

I go all out for my family.

If you want trouble

You got it ♪

And all BS aside,

when you talk a hundred million, come on.

Who isn't interested?

Miami International Airport

was the scene last month

of one of the largest heists

in US history.

The crime was a family affair,

led by three Cuban-American relatives.

The g*ng of thieves walked out

with millions in broad daylight.

The mastermind

claims to have learned his skills

by studying television shows.

The FBI.

Money in the bag

and don't scream.

What happened after the crime

was even more incredible

than the theft itself.

Were mistakes made? Yeah.

Was trust broken? Definitely.

But at the end of the day,

Karls is family.

So, what are you gonna do?

When I was in Cuba as a kid

I saw in movies and television

that in the United States,

if you work hard,

you can get what you want.

Oh, Brock,

isn't this beautiful?

It sure is.

No matter how hard you work in Cuba,

there was no future.

That's why I wanted to come

to the United States.

An increasing number of Cuban exiles

have been sailing north to Miami

in search of a new and better life.

The path is hard,

and their future is uncertain,

but they say it's worth it for freedom.

God bless America.

It was like going

to another planet.

It was totally different.

You see the cars

and people dressed nice.

I had never seen an apple in Cuba.

I had never seen grapes.

I saw all of that my first day in Miami.

I've known Karl

for probably 20 to 25 years,

working in the tow company.

Karl was a hard worker.

Come in early, leave late.

Always aim to please,

always aim to satisfy. On time.

In the United States,

I've been able to achieve

whatever I put my mind to.

One time I went skating with friends.

I had never gone skating in my life.

So I set a goal for myself.

I wanted to be one

of the best skaters on that rink.

I skated all the time.

Every day.

I've always been like that.

Every time I've wanted to do something,

I've persisted and persisted

and I've succeeded.

This guy's

the most simplest guy

that honestly I have ever met.

In Miami, you have

to have some swag to stand out.

Karl didn't need no swag. Didn't want it.

Always been a family guy. His brother,

his mom, that's what Karl lives for.

The American Dream,

for me, has always been

to have a house,

a nice car,

not an expensive one, just a nice one.

And to have a family.

I met Karls through a friend.

I was at her house and we were preparing

for a Thanksgiving dinner for work.

He walked over to me and he asked me

if I could give him my phone number,

and I told him no.

When I met her,

she looked at me like this.

She didn't think much of me.

Then he started

writing down his phone number on a card.

His cell phone number, his beeper number,

his house number, his work number.

I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Just one number's fine."

She was a bit cold.

I thought about it as a

What's the word?

A challenge.

If I open my heart to you ♪

We had a friendship at first.

He would pick me up,

we would go roller skating,

and he was really good at roller skating.

I thought he was handsome, you know,

he has green eyes, tall.

I just knew right off the bat

he was a good guy,

and somebody that I knew

that I could have a life with.

But I just didn't want

to tell him right away.

We were like the perfect couple.

We were together

and we didn't need anything else.

From the moment

we met, everything was like a fairy tale.

But if my family

didn't approve of him, like,

you just weren't gonna date that person.

My niece is how old?

And this guy looks how old?

I remember walking in, seeing him,

and kind of gave him the dirty look,

the stare. You know how it is.

Hey, Pinky.

My uncles,

my grandfather, my whole family,

they were very intimidating.

Sometimes I wouldn't even know

why some guys would stop talking to me.

Karls,

he earned my respect, treated her right.

Like I told him, just

don't ever get to the point,

if you feel you gotta

put your hands on her, just walk away,

'cause if you put your hands on her,

I'm gonna put my hands on you.

You know, and that's something

you don't want.

I didn't consider

my family mafia,

but everybody

in the streets knew my family.

They knew that we were not

a family you could mess with.

At first we were

just kids on the block,

but eventually we evolved into a

what they call a g*ng.

I didn't consider it a g*ng,

I considered it family,

but you know how it is.

When I met her family,

little by little

I noticed that her uncle Pinky

had a reputation

of selling drugs on the streets.

On the street, people respected him a lot.

The area we grew up in

you're gonna bump into a lot of hoodlums.

You had your Syndicates, your Zulus,

your TNSs, your Imperial Gangsters,

your Latin Kings,

your Latin Forces, your YLOs.

People would pull up to the house,

"Hey, we need to talk to so-and-so

in there, I know he's in there with you."

"Yeah, he's in there with me.

And what's the problem?"

"Well, the problem ain't with you,

the problem's with him."

Well, if you got a problem with him

you got a problem with me.

My mom would even come out

and fight with us sometimes.

We weren't really bad, bad individuals.

Just doing a lot of stupid sh*t.

We would sell anything

from f*ck' coconut Icees

to f*ck' cocaine, you know what I mean?

Cars, drugs, boats, g*ns.

Miami's a crazy place.

Palm trees and breeze

and b*tches with dirty knees.

A peninsula that smuggles

all them f*ck' keys.

Honestly, I didn't

like what they were doing, but Pinky?

He was like family.

So I didn't want to get involved.

I think it was Christmas Eve

he proposed to me.

He told me, he was like, "The ring

that I'm giving you is a little ring."

I mean, you couldn't really

see the diamond or anything.

But he's like,

"It's just, you know, to start off,

and then I'll get you a bigger ring."

I didn't ask for much.

For us to be together,

and have a house, and have children.

She was going crazy for kids,

she always wanted kids.

She'd pick my kids up and, you know,

she'd take 'em for the weekends.

Here comes my daughter

with a new dress, and her hair done.

Yeah, I knew she was gonna be a great mom.

I always wanted a big family,

like my dad, who had four children.

My wife and I kept trying and trying,

but we could never have a child.

I went to

a fertility doctor, got on treatments,

and when I went,

we were already starting the testing,

and the doctor was like,

"You're pregnant."

"Oh, what a miracle."

I lost the baby around sixteen weeks,

and, um, so a little while after,

um, Karl and I decided that we wanted

to try again to have another baby.

I tried for months and I would do

pregnancy tests, and nothing.

So then we decided to go back

to the fertility doctor.

When I went back the second time,

doctor tells me, "You're pregnant again."

And I was like, "Oh, my God,

you have to be kidding me."

I was about seven months pregnant,

and the pregnancy was going good.

We were happy.

We already had a room for our little girl.

We went places

and she would buy stuff for the room,

and we put Hello Kitty everywhere.

One day, I remember

I'd told Karl that I wasn't feeling good.

I told him, um, I had a bad feeling

that, you know, something was,

you know, not right.

I put her in the truck

and went to the hospital.

We got there in 20 minutes.

When the nurse came in to check me,

she told me that

the baby's heart rate is dropping.

And, um, she's like,

"Well, you have to give birth."

And then she told me

the baby's not gonna make it.

She was already dead.

We couldn't do anything.

We did

have to prepare funeral arrangements.

And, um, I asked the nurse

to please let me hold her.

And, um, so they let me

hold her before I left the hospital.

And, um, I have to say,

that was the hardest part.

Karl was devastated.

And, um, I felt like, you know,

all of our hopes and our dreams,

you know, had been shattered.

That really messed him up.

f*ck anybody up. Eight months?

I wanted to adopt,

and I wanted to adopt quickly,

because I already had the room

painted and set up for my daughter.

We really didn't want to let everybody

know that the baby had passed away.

And we found an adoption agency in Russia.

But it was expensive.

Over $30,000.

We couldn't afford to adopt a child.

The Karl that I know,

quiet, calm, cool, collective, thoughtful,

when he puts his mind to it,

he accomplishes what he wants.

And he couldn't get it,

not working the way he was working.

That must have destroyed his a*s.

And then he starts cranking himself up,

like, thinking what can he possibly do?

A few months later,

my friend, Onelio, called me.

He said he had a business proposition.

He told me, "I got a job at Brinks."

"I'm a driver."

"What's the proposition?"

"Every Sunday between 2:00 to 2:30,

an airplane arrives from Germany."

"There's $80-100 million inside."

"They need to transfer

the money onto pallets."

"Inside of a warehouse

they count the money."

"But since it's really hot in there,

they leave the doors open."

"What do you want to do?"

"Steal the money."

He said, "You told me

you wanted to adopt a girl,

and I thought this would help."

$80 million is a lot of money.

I asked him, "Are any cops there?"

"No, it's just us."

"And we can't have g*ns in there

because we're not police."

"Their policy is if you're getting robbed,

don't confront them."

"It's like stealing candy from a baby."

I didn't believe him.

So I decided to get a hotel room

that looked at the airport.

I bought a big telescope

to watch the planes.

The routine never changed.

I knew what Onelio said was true.

But I wanted to see the money for myself.

So I went to the warehouse.

You wouldn't believe how easy it was.

They were counting the money.

I saw a lot of giant bags.

When I saw the money, I said,

"I'm going to do this."

Next, The FBI in color.

Because that money

was for the Federal Reserve,

I needed to learn how they worked

The FBI

Then one day I was watching TV

and an FBI show came on.

Where were the witnesses?

Age unknown,

height average, weight average

"Let's see what they do."

That's where I learned

how federal agents catch people.

Investigators

attempted to lift shoe prints from a desk.

I learned different things

from different shows.

CSI: Miami,

FBI Files,

I Got Away With It.

Discovery Channel also helped me a lot.

And it starts to emit a signal.

I learned that

there were trackers inside the money bags,

GPS trackers.

You have to be careful, they don't put

them in every bag, only a few of them.

Treasury builds it

into all US paper currency.

I learned that

the money was marked.

Send this down to the lab,

and check the serial number

on that Navy equipment.

That you can't

leave any type of evidence behind,

nothing that can link you to the robbery.

- Plastic holds prints better than paper.

- All right, I'll take a look.

Your fingerprint was recovered

from the GPS unit.

What kind of idiot would do that?

I also learned

that anyone at the robbery,

the workers of the warehouse workers

and Brinks employees, would be suspects.

Their friends would be suspects, too.

I was flipping through the channels

and I saw a guy

who had stolen a Brinks truck.

I found out why they were caught.

They started spending a lot of money.

They were ordinary people

and they started buying houses

worth millions.

They bought cars, boats,

motorcycles, watches.

It's little details like these

that lead to big breaks

for law enforcement.

I learned a lot of things from television.

That was my source of information.

And little by little,

I became a professional.

You know the FBI, Lou.

We're nothing if not persistent.

From the start,

I knew that I couldn't do it alone.

I needed to find a group I could trust.

I didn't want to incriminate anyone

in my family, especially my wife.

And that's why I chose Ricky.

I'd known him for years,

many years.

I heard he had experience in robberies,

and I needed someone like him.

I just told him the plan was

to steal some money. A lot of money.

He said he wasn't interested.

The job was too for him,

and it scared him a bit.

So I had to resort to Plan B.

I didn't want to use my own family,

but the only person I knew

who was streetwise

and liked easy money was

my brother-in-law, Jeffrey.

Jeff's my nephew,

and he is hardheaded

and he is a troublemaker.

Everybody knew Jeff.

My brother was more of, like,

the black sheep of the family.

Always getting himself into something.

Them m*therf*ckers would

talk sh*t or something,

and in the middle of the street,

he'd pop the trunk, out comes the shotgun.

"Jeff, are you kidding me?"

He liked to party,

and he partied hard.

He'd call me, three, four in the morning.

"Hey, Unc, I'm at the club,

you wanna come down?"

I'm like, "Man, I gotta work tomorrow."

Jeff was to the extreme.

The more money there is,

the crazier the chick is,

the better the drugs, he's into it.

So, yes, $100,000,000 heist,

he is definitely interested.

I still needed

a stolen van to use for the robbery.

I knew beforehand that Alex

had a stolen car

stripped of its VIN number.

Jeff came to me

knowing I could provide a car.

He was a real good friend.

He gave me more details,

and that's when I knew Karls was involved.

I said, "f*ck."

I really didn't want to do nothing

that had anything to do with him.

He was just one of these guys

that wasn't really from the street.

He wanted to be from the streets,

he bragged a lot,

just for the attention,

one of those guys. I didn't like him.

I went and spoke to Jeff, and I'm like,

"Look, I don't know

if I can do this, man." You know?

"It sounds real good,

but this guy's just a f*ck' idiot."

I feel like,

even if we go through with this,

he's gonna ruin it in the long run.

But he was like, "No,

we'll keep him in check." This and that.

At the end of the day,

it was so much money,

I'm like, "f*ck it, I'll do it."

I needed someone else

to work as a lookout

while we did the robbery.

I chose a friend from work.

Karls was a hardworking guy, man.

He's quiet but friendly at the same time.

So at first it was like, "Oh, bullshit."

"Where the hell is there $100,000,000

sitting in a warehouse?"

But he was like,

"I'll give you a million dollars.

All you have to do is be a lookout."

I don't know why

he would give me a million dollars,

$10,000 would have been fine.

I would have agreed to it, too.

You could imagine, poor kid from Cuba,

I was like, "Man, this is it.

The American dream."

Then I needed

one last person

to guard people while I took the bags,

and for that I chose Pinky.

Pinky was a person

who wasn't afraid of anything.

Karl called me and told me, "Listen."

"How do you want to come across

some big bucks? Big money?"

And I'm like, "What you got lined up?"

I'm thinking the usual,

we're gonna go hit a grow house

or, you know, some dope boys.

But then he pops out with,

"Hey, we're gonna rob an airport."

I'm like, "Get the f*ck outta here, man."

He goes, "No, seriously,

we're talking about $100 million."

"I got everything worked out."

And he laid it out for me.

Sounds good.

But I had just done a different job,

so I was okay financially

for a little while.

So, I was actually trying to lay low,

get settled down and do this family thing.

So, I wasn't very interested.

But Jeff knows how to push buttons.

Jeff kept calling me, calling me,

"Hey, Tinkerbell,

you sure you're ready for this?"

You know, "You got your tutu on?"

You start wondering, "Hey

Does he really think

I don't have the ba*ls for this?"

So I'm like, "Okay, how sure

are you that that money's there?"

He goes, "Oh, I'd bet my life on it."

Like, "Watch what you say."

"Watch what you say."

'Cause if I get wrapped up

in some bullshit

over some petty sh*t,

we're gonna have a problem.

Like, "All right."

Yeah.

I had everyone I needed.

And Jeffrey, he couldn't run

or jump or anything,

because he was too fat.

All he could do was drive the truck.

Next, I had to plan the robbery

so that we could get away clean.

Sounds nice.

Sounds real nice.

But are they really just gonna let us go

on up in there and start grabbing bags?

You gotta do your homework.

So we just laid the plan out.

How we gonna do this,

where are we going, who's involved?

We went out to the airport,

we did a drive through.

Well, it is an airport.

There's a lot of people,

a lot of eyes, a lot of movement.

We got a Customs headquarter

right across the street.

The faster we get in and out,

the less chance we have

of getting caught.

We didn't want Jeffrey

too close to the docks,

where, hey, the guards would look at

the truck or be suspicious or turn around.

Pinky and I would get out and run.

You got 45 seconds

from the time the car stops

to the time the car's gotta go.

Pinky would deal with the people,

I would get all the money I could.

"Jeffrey, when we run into the warehouse,

you need to reverse the truck

right against the wall by the door

so I can load the bags onto the truck,

and we can do it quickly,

without speaking."

In 45 seconds,

whoever's not in the car stays.

A minute and a half in here,

the cops will block you

and you're never gonna make it out.

Karl broke it down, he told me

he didn't want no g*ns in the area.

He doesn't feel comfortable around g*ns.

In Cuba, people fight with their fists,

not with machetes or g*ns.

They use their fists.

I never saw myself putting

a g*n to someone's head,

because I'm not like that.

I come to you and I tell you,

"Yeah, there's $100,000,000.

Don't worry, there's no g*ns, nothin'."

"It's a piece of pie."

$100,000,000? No g*ns? At an airport?

They're surrounded

by all these different agencies.

Yeah, I'm definitely

gonna go with my g*ns.

I also wanted

to be sure of our routes,

because the freeways had cameras.

I didn't want them

to follow me to my house,

so I started driving around

and I found a road

under the freeway

that took me directly to my house.

I also needed to buy clothes,

gloves, mirrors.

He's going MacGyver, trying to

You know, too much movies

and book sense, you know?

So, "Change your names

and have code words and shave."

Arms and chest

so we wouldn't leave hair as evidence.

He's a different

breed, so he thinks different.

But that's Karl.

I've always felt confident

that when I want to do something,

I can do it.

I was ready.

On the day of the robbery.

I felt a bit nervous when I woke up.

You got

the blood pumping, nerves,

and you're always gonna have that.

So everybody get, you know,

their head straight, everybody get,

you know, their sh*t together.

That Sunday, I told him I was

gonna go out with a girlfriend of mine.

He told me that

he was meeting with some friends.

I called Onelio

and said, "Call me

as soon as the plane lands."

We parked about a half mile

from the airport

to wait for Onelio's call.

I didn't want to sweat,

because if a drop of sweat

lands on the floor,

maybe they'd find some DNA

proving I was there.

Can you believe it's November already?

So I had

the AC blasting. It was freezing inside.

He calls me and says

the plane has arrived.

So I knew I had about half an hour.

I didn't think they'd do it.

I'm like, "Man, this stupid f*ck Karl

is probably gonna chicken out

at the end, or whatever."

I was nervous,

but I didn't want to show it.

I didn't want anyone to get hurt.

Was my blood pumping

and were there some nerves shaking?

Yeah. But nervous?

Nah. I was ready.

We passed Victor.

His job was to warn us

if any police approached.

When we got there,

everything was nice.

No movements, nothing was going on,

the dock doors were open.

This is gonna happen now.

This is going through.

I told Pinky,

"Don't pull out your g*n,

we don't need it. No one has a g*n here."

"Hey, calm down."

"Listen, this is what's gonna happen.

We're gonna run up in there,

we're gonna lay these guys down,

and we're taking some money."

I made a call to Karls.

There was a van full

of police guys heading to you.

"Holy sh*t.

Okay, what we got going on now?"

I was like

"The plan is f*cked."

They're the Customs agents.

I'm guessing it's shift change.

We're sitting there,

we're waiting for these fools to smoke.

"Don't look this way, oh, please

don't look this way."

I was nervous.

Knowing you're going to commit a robbery

and you just saw police

enter the building,

anyone would be nervous.

I told Karl, soon as

that last guard touches that door handle,

ain't no ifs, ands, or buts,

I'm gone.

Karl was a little jittery, he was a little

nervous, he was like, "Wait, but, but"

Sure as sh*t, that officer put

his hands on that handle,

Jeff didn't know what happened,

Karl didn't know what happened,

I was gone.

Everybody on the floor!

When you're going in there

you gotta prove your point,

and get that point across effectively.

Anybody makes a move,

you're gonna get hurt.

It took a minute, till they saw

the guard's expression

and then that g*n to his head.

Element of surprise is a b*tch.

Feet apart, hands apart, faces down.

I go straight

to where the money is.

Those that

don't know what $100,000,000 looks like,

it looks beautiful.

But when I pick them up,

I find out they're very heavy.

I thought they were stuck to the pallet.

What we didn't put into the equation

was how much them bags

was gonna weigh.

They was heavy.

Each one weighed 40 pounds.

When I pick them up,

it's 120 pounds in each hand.

I dragged the bags out, and when

I looked back up,

Jeffrey hadn't moved the truck.

He was in the same spot.

He froze in the middle of the street.

Jeff was further than

he could throw the bags into the truck.

Uh-oh.

I had planned on a few trips.

I wasn't gonna

stick around, we had to go.

But on the fifth

and final bag, my bandana fell off.

I lowered my head quickly

and I got back in the truck.

I would have loved

to stay, to clean them out.

Unfortunately, we didn't have the time.

The greedier you get, the riskier it gets.

I told Jeffrey to

keep driving normally, not too fast.

We ain't going out

skidding, no Dukes of Hazzard,

doing donuts, jumping ramps,

we ain't doing none of that.

I go, "sh*t, they did it."

I let them know. Jeff, check the mirrors.

Karl, keep an eye out,

make sure nobody's coming behind us.

Trying to make it to our clean vehicle.

Jeffrey left

in the same truck we used for the robbery,

and we followed, but at a distance.

I'm driving,

Karl's in the back.

I didn't have time to think.

I just immediately started

checking the bags for GPS trackers.

He doesn't see nothing,

"Hey, It's clean. It's clean."

I look back and he's waving

this sh*t in my face,

he's waving these bundles of money.

"Look, money!"

And he's

Starts flipping through it.

I get that phone call.

I said, "All right, where you wanna meet?"

Everybody was screaming,

yelling, "Oh, sh*t!" You know?

I'm like, "Man,

y'all need to sit the f*ck still."

Jeffrey pulls up

next to us at the traffic light,

I lowered the window

and showed him a stack of bills.

It was $100,000.

Oh, man, he lit up

like a Christmas tree.

I took the truck.

And that's it.

The truck disappeared.

On the way back to the house

there was some smiles on our faces.

I mean, there was like a little

kind of cheer, like, "Damn, we did this."

"We pulled it off." You know,

"Nobody got hurt, we did this."

It was crazy.

Just an instant adrenaline rush

just went through you,

like, "Damn, my whole life just changed."

It felt good to see all that money.

I

felt proud because I succeeded.

I just did something

that no one's ever done,

but everyone wants to.

I just wanted to steal enough money

to adopt a child.

But this was more

than I could ever imagine.

It's like winning the lottery twice.

It went off without a hitch.

It did. It really did.

It was too, too smooth.

I was like, "There's gotta be a catch."