01x04 - The Money Plane: Part 2

[bunniefuu]

Do you think I'm made of money? ♪

Do you think I make it grow? ♪

Think I own a cash box, mother? ♪

Tell your baby no, no no ♪

You ever been b*tch-slapped

by a couple hundred grand?

Six million dollars in $100 bills.

One million dollars in $50 bills.

And $400,000 in $20 bills.

Seven point four mil.

It felt great.

We counted it and were like, "Wow."

New car smell?

Well, you got that new money smell.

Jeffrey asks me

if he can take a picture of the money.

I said, "Are you crazy?"

Jeffrey went crazy,

talking about the stuff he was gonna buy.

"Hey, whoa, whoa!"

"We ain't buying nothing, man."

"Just keep your mouth shut

and we're gonna lay low."

Do you think it grows on trees? ♪

Yeah, do you think it grows on trees? ♪

Miami's a beautiful city.

It's paradise, people love to come here.

The sun, the beaches and so forth.

But we also have our troubled side.

So, it's a paradise,

but it's also a dangerous place.

That's where we come in.

You commit a robbery here,

Miami-Dade County,

we're coming for you.

- Fifty-six stay?

- Affirmative, 56 is the

Call comes in of a robbery that had

occurred at Miami International Airport

in the warehouse area.

And at first, I thought, "Warehouse area?"

"What the hell could they"

"What's there to steal?"

I'm the first detective on the scene.

The victims start telling me,

"They took money."

I'm like, "What are you talking about?"

It was sitting right in front of me,

it's a pallet full of money.

And I go, "This is money?"

They go, "Yeah."

A wooden pallet full of money.

It's ridiculous kind of money.

Movie stuff.

When you have a case like this,

if you screw it up,

someone's gonna take

a real giant turd on you. Okay?

After the robbery

I didn't know how to tell my wife

because I knew she wasn't gonna be happy.

I remember

getting home, and I see my brother,

he's walking out with,

like, a bag. Like a gym bag.

Laughing.

I start to open the bag

'cause I don't know what's in it.

He's like, "Don't touch it."

I actually got scared

and started to panic and frantic,

and I was like, "Oh, no."

She asked what I did

and I said I stole it.

I couldn't believe

he would do something like that.

You can't just steal $7,000,000

from the government

and think they're not really

gonna try to find you.

But

I just couldn't, you know,

get him in trouble and turn him in.

A part of me wanted to,

because I didn't want

to get in trouble myself.

He was my happiness.

So I didn't need the money

to make me happy.

I already had everything that I wanted.

The only thing that was missing out

of our happiness was to have a baby.

I've seen in movies and TV shows,

money can't be buried

underground for too long

because it rots due to the humidity.

I got plastic PVC tubes.

I put the money in there,

the bags of money,

and I added baby powder,

because it absorbs the humidity.

I stashed it in the house.

And then, later on, got a safe.

All that money, you never know.

People get k*lled

for a lot less than that.

My closet, I had, like, a board.

You could remove it

and there was, like, a gap,

so I put all the money in there

and put the board back up.

And went back to work.

I just went to work

$5,000 in my pocket.

Why? I don't know.

I guess the feeling, man,

just having the money.

It was spoken. "Hey, nothing crazy.

We're gonna lay low, nine to five."

There are gonna be a lot

of people looking for this.

I committed the robbery on Sunday

and went to work on Monday

like any other day.

But instead of working

70 hours with overtime,

I did a bit less, 50, 60 hours

I didn't buy anything for myself,

I didn't buy jewelry,

or flash money, or buy luxury items.

Nobody had a reason to suspect me.

When I arrived, uniform

officer's already been on the scene.

I was told that one

of the subjects had dropped a bandana.

We had it sent for DNA analysis.

We were really hoping the DNA

would come back on the bandana,

that's gonna be our first lead.

In a case of this magnitude,

the amount of money that was taken,

I knew that I would

have to contact the FBI.

My initial analysis was

I had before me a major heist.

Even on other Brinks jobs, it's not

every day that we have $7.4 million

in cash taken in a few minutes.

We're used to loads of cargo

that were stolen from the port,

a million, a million and a half dollars,

or whatever was taken,

but this was considerably more.

It didn't make sense

until we responded

and actually started seeing it in person,

that it was true.

The doors were open to the street.

It was shocking

to see how accessible it was.

There's no security here. The only people

that were there were the Brinks guys,

and they're not allowed to have

firearms inside the warehouse.

You start looking around, you see

not one or two, but multiple cameras

and you start to get excited.

Like, "All right,

this is really gonna be good."

I asked about the cameras.

The cameras hadn't been working in months.

You have millions of dollars that

come through here every weekend

and you don't have one

freaking surveillance camera that works?

You're k*lling me.

In 34 years of law enforcement,

you coulda never told me

that that kind of money gets handled

in the fashion that it did.

I I was dumbfounded.

The only thing protecting

$80,000,000 from the outside world

was a yellow painted line on the ground.

It didn't make any sense.

They came in

specifically to hit this money,

so we figured from the beginning

that there had to have been an insider.

We had cell phone numbers

of all the drivers.

But it means nothing.

How do you know that one phone call

that leads you to the perpetrator?

You need more information than that.

We started talking

to all these different employees,

between Brinks

and the other two handling companies.

"Who saw the robbers?

What'd they say? What'd they look like?"

I had a gut feeling that,

"Man, somebody's involved in this."

Somebody that has inside knowledge

that told the bad guys

of the specifics

of how the money's brought in.

"It's gonna be an easy robbery."

It's an inside job.

After the robbery, little

by little, I set aside $40,000,

and started the process

of adopting a child.

We went with a company,

they would let you go in a chat room

where you can actually see

the children playing, interacting,

and seeing that they were healthy.

They all looked cute. It's like,

"Wanna take 'em all home."

We were really happy

and looking forward to doing

something positive, adopting a child.

And also healing ourselves,

so for us, it was like a therapy.

You're watching

South Florida's news station.

I remember

we'd watch the news every day.

No shoes.

And nothing.

Nothing would come on the news.

We're live on Channel 7 news,

can we see your fish?

We're like, "Damn,

we're actually doing pretty good."

Amazing.

Everybody was just talking

about not spending their money,

being smart with it, don't show out,

don't be showing off

and all that, and, um

of course,

the f*cking exact opposite happens.

Jeff was a sucker for the women.

At first it was like

"How does this fat boy get

these fine-a*s girls?"

But then when you start popping up

with money out of nowhere

and this type of money,

that's when it became like,

"What the f*ck did you guys do?"

I told Jeff, "What's going on?

What's the problem?"

He goes, "Nothing, I just went

and, you know enjoyed myself."

"Man, you gotta lay low.

We ain't out the clear yet."

I said, "Jeffrey,

each one of those watches costs $20,000."

You're going to attract

the police's attention.

We was all supposed to get

our stuff, get our cut and disappear.

Jeff never did that.

That made everybody a target.

Karl called me and he goes,

"Man, Jeffrey's out of control, man."

"He's out doing drugs,

out every night partying,

and he's spending crazy money."

I'm like, "Okay, so try to handle that."

I made him promise to leave Miami.

He told me he would leave,

but he didn't go.

That made me very angry,

because that's not what we agreed.

So, I looked around

and found where he was

drugged up with two prostit*tes

in a room.

Jeff!

I said, "Jeffrey, what are you doing, man?

I told you not to do this."

I said, "I need you to leave Miami,

because you're stirring the pot."

"I don't know how close the cops are,

but if you keep doing this,

they're going to catch us."

Get outta here.

At that point, he started sh*t talking,

giving me attitude.

- Hey! Hey!

- Get out!

When he gave me that crap, I thought,

"I've got to find a way

to stop him spending money.

Get the f*ck out.

It was one

of two things. Give him a beating

or take his money,

the reason I could get caught.

I thought, "If I take his money,

there won't be anything to spend."

And that's when I talked with my "friend."

I told him I had a problem.

"I have a brother-in-law.

I need a favor. He's at his place."

"Take all the money he has.

Tie him up and take his money, please."

"Don't hurt him. Just scare him."

I feel bad for having done it,

because he was like my brother.

But I was thinking about my freedom.

Two weeks passed

and I didn't hear anything about him,

so I figured he left.

But Jeffrey started

doing the same old things.

He's spending money, going to strip clubs.

He started giving out watches to everyone.

They take almost all his money

and he still keeps doing stupid stuff.

If you're making it rain

with $20 and $100 bills,

and you had always been poor,

never had money before

people are going to do something,

especially if you've been

kidnapped already.

I realized he hadn't learned his lesson.

I didn't say anything.

But I knew I needed to change

my method of getting through to him.

He needed a beating.

I'm not violent

until I have to be.

So I decided to call my "friends" again.

But this time I wanted them

to be a bit more aggressive.

I wanted to strip him of every dollar.

So they called me in front of Jeffrey,

but they pretended like

they didn't know me,

and they asked me for $1 million.

I said, "I don't know

what you're talking about."

"He'll tell you where it is."

"It's at my mom's place,

under some plants,

inside some pipes."

I said, "Look, he only has $475,000."

"I'll give you $275,000

and I keep $200,000."

That half was for Jeffrey,

so when he needed cash,

I could give him his own money.

I committed a robbery.

And now I was having Jeffrey kidnapped.

All I wanted was a baby.

My niece called me.

That Jeff has been kidnapped.

"Oh, man. This is not good."

"This is not good."

Now, it's personal.

They wrecked him up.

He was at Baptist Hospital

with brain injuries.

They took pliers to his fingernails,

they burned him with cigars.

They did hit him with,

like, a metal on his head

and, um, they shifted his brain.

My brother could've gotten k*lled.

Call him up. "What happened?"

"I had just come back

from the strip club and they got me."

I started thinking,

"Who?" Who would do it?

Somebody he was with

put somebody else onto this?

That's usually where it comes from.

Those closest to you.

It was a bit violent, yes.

Was it the best way to do that? No.

But something had to happen to him,

because if you do something wrong,

you have to pay the price.

We had an agreement

and he didn't follow the terms.

We put every resource

and tried every technique that we could

for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Nobody had any positive information

about this robbery.

One of the subjects

had dropped a bandana

and we had it sent for DNA analysis.

When you have a piece

of evidence like that

in a case of this magnitude,

you're thinking, "If I can get some

DNA evidence and the guy is in the system,

we can crack the case."

We get the results back,

there's no DNA on the bandana.

We're like, "Damn!"

Nothing's panning out.

You do the best you can

to try to solve it.

But we needed something else.

There was a reticence

from the supervisor to put out a reward.

Because you get everybody

at every street corner

that saw somebody that looks like the guy.

I didn't want to get bogged down

with putting people on wild goose chases.

But it gets brought up several times,

"Are we ready?"

We finally got to the point

where we said, "Okay."

Miami International Airport

was the scene last month

of one of the largest heists

in US history.

A plane with $80 million on it

It's official. It's out there.

Now we got trouble.

millions of dollars in broad daylight.

There was so many stories

in the street.

You go to a corner store,

you go to a cafeteria,

and you just hear people talking.

almost uncanny resemblance

to the plot of Goodfellas.

Nobody knows for sure

just how much was taken

in a daring pre-dawn raid at the Lufthansa

cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport.

I had never seen it.

$150,000 reward

is being offered

for anyone willing to come forward

If you look historically

at investigations of this type,

the majority of times it gets solved

because somebody comes forward,

somebody with insider information.

Money talks.

Miami Police Department.

And the first night, we had a caller.

He was nervous.

He didn't know if he should tell us,

that he was scared.

So, at this point, I'm starting to think,

"Okay, I got myself a wacko here."

As often happens

when you put out a reward,

you get good stuff,

but you could also get the crazies.

So, that's when I stopped everything

and I said, "Okay, look here."

"Are you sure that you know who did this?"

And he kind of looked at me,

he looked around,

and he said,

"Out of 100%, I'm 150% sure."

And I said, "Why?"

He said, "Because I was invited

to go and I didn't go."

My understanding was

he was approached

about being part of the robbery

and then he was aggravated

that he had been cut out.

He starts telling us

who all the players are by name.

And the mastermind of the robbery,

a guy named Karls Monzon.

The first thing we needed to do was

to confirm some of the things he told us.

When we start comparing phone records,

Karls Monzon is in contact

with one of the other Brinks drivers.

Onelio Diaz.

Onelio Diaz contacted him

ten times or more the day of the robbery.

We also learned that Onelio

was a friend of Karl from Cuba.

So, now we're like,

"Hey, here we go. Here we go."

The next step is to get

conversation on recording

from Karl Monzon

that would be incriminating.

So I called the informant

and said, "Look, I don't know

what you're planning to do today,

but I do know that you're going to go

to Karl's house and talk to him."

I went down there.

We videotaped from the outside

and the informant went in.

He began talking

about the robbery at the airport,

saying he wished

he could have done it himself.

And I said, "Ricky,

I don't want to talk about it."

We started talking about something else

and then he starts talking

about the heist again.

So I told him,

"I'm going to the bathroom."

I grabbed a g*n.

and threatened him, saying,

"If I see you around here,

talking to my family,

I'm going to snap your neck."

Then I kicked him out of the house.

At that point, we could arrest Karls,

but there were

other perpetrators we needed,

so we weren't gonna jump the g*n yet.

When we have wiretaps, we do something

that's called "tickle the wire,"

which means that you do

some action through an informant

that causes a reaction

in the people you wiretap,

and then they speak about it on the phone.

So, I asked Brinks to get

all the guards together

and I said to them,

"Look, guys, we are at a dead end."

"We have no idea who did this robbery."

"We're lost."

So, we left.

Onelio called Karl.

He was ecstatic.

"They got nothing! They have nothing!"

"And I told you.

People didn't think I could do this,

but I did it, I pulled it off!"

We said, "Well, that's not necessarily

accurate, Mr. Monzon."

I thought

we'd taken all of Jeffrey's money,

so I stopped worrying about him.

But he must have had more hidden,

because he was still in the strip clubs.

After the second kidnapping,

Jeffrey changed.

He didn't trust anyone.

He was afraid.

He started being distrustful of me.

By then, he already suspected

that I was involved with the kidnappers.

The third one

I had nothing to do with that.

My "friends" called me and said,

"We kidnapped your brother."

"We need you to give us

half a million dollars."

I mean, to be

investigating a significant armed robbery,

and in the middle of that, you know,

discovering an ongoing kidnapping

- It's almost surreal.

- It was. Yeah.

No, this was like nothing I'd ever seen.

Karls, please help me.

What do you want me to do?

Karls,

I don't have any money left.

I'm sorry,

but you're f*ck out of luck, bro.

You're telling me

you're not going to give them money?

I don't give a f*ck about you.

You didn't learn your lesson, man?

You didn't learn?

I was tired of his mistakes.

Because if he'd listened to me,

none of this would have happened.

I said, "No, k*ll him,

you'd be doing me a favor."

And I turned my phone off.

He said, "k*ll him, I don't give a sh*t."

Then we're like, "All right."

The case had just taken

a giant left turn right there.

At that point,

I put an airplane in the air

so that we could follow Mr. Monzon.

And I also called a SWAT team

in the event that we located Jeffrey

and we could effect a rescue.

- Hello?

- Sis. It's Jeffrey.

I'm in trouble.

They put him

on the phone and he was crying,

he was like, "Sis, please, they're gonna

k*ll me." Like, "Please." You know?

They said,

"If you don't give us the money,

you're gonna find his fingers

in your grandmother's mailbox.

About an hour later, my wife calls crying.

Then my mother-in-law called,

and my grandmother-in-law called.

Everyone wanted me to help,

saying we were brothers.

At that moment, I felt betrayed.

They had already kidnapped him twice

and taken almost all of his money,

and now they wanted to take mine.

But it was his problem, not mine.

I had to finish it one way or another.

He tells them,

"Let's meet. I'll meet you."

And he just has that tone

that he's pissed.

Everything was getting out of control.

I never thought I could k*ll someone,

but they pushed me

somewhere I'd never been.

I had to make it stop.

We had

a surveillance team following him

going back into Dade County,

and he stops at a g*n store.

I was scared.

They knew I had money.

I wasn't gonna give them anything.

We cannot afford

to have him sh**ting it out

with kidnappers using as*ault r*fles,

so we made a decision

that we gotta pick up Karl.

At that moment,

I was on a different planet.

I was fed up.

My plan was

to load the g*ns with b*ll*ts

and when they walk up the to car

I'd fill it with b*ll*ts.

sh**t everyone inside.

And then I see a van

I go like this and I'm looking.

They were running towards me

and I thought it must be the kidnappers.

I realized it was a SWAT team.

Game over. They got us.

He was thrown into my car and

I looked in my rear view mirror and said,

"Mr. Monzon, welcome to the FBI."

Now we gotta get Jeffrey Boatwright

back from the kidnappers.

We explained to Karls,

"Listen, we got you by the ba*ls."

"But right now, let's concentrate

on getting your brother-in-law back."

We need to make sure Karls can

make phone calls back to the abductors.

We can't have anybody

know that he is in custody.

He wanted to see his wife

and he was threatening,

he wasn't gonna cooperate,

he wasn't gonna do anything.

So, we brought her over.

So, I said "okay" and told Karl,

"I need you to help my brother out.

They're gonna k*ll him."

That's when I started

to cooperate with them

to save my brother-in-law.

We didn't know where

they were, so we used some technology

that hits cell towers and will give you

a general vicinity of where that phone is.

But that person can't turn the phone off,

'cause then you're not getting a signal.

He was brazen enough

to pull off a 7.4 million dollar robbery.

- Surely he can BS kidnappers, we figured.

- You'd think so.

I told them they were

f*ggots, they were cowards,

that I'd beat their asses

when I saw them,

that I'd sh**t them if I see them.

That I'd f*ck their mothers.

That I was going to fight with anyone

who'd try me.

These guys were

all night long shutting down the phones.

At some point, the phones

went back up near the airport.

You need to trawl, because you need to get

within a certain range of the phones

in order to say, "Okay,

it's in that house, next to that window."

That kind of detail.

We're in the area,

we're getting information.

It's not an exact science, and a freeway

goes through there, so it's kinda screwy,

a lot of dead ends and weird roads

that don't go through.

And they said, "Wait a minute."

"What about this hotel that's just

right around the corner there?"

The Miami Princess Hotel is a hotel

that has these special rooms

where individuals

having illicit affairs go

because they can drive

their cars into a little garage.

Open the garage door, you pull your car

into the garage, close the garage door,

then there's an internal staircase that

goes up to the actual hotel room upstairs.

- Escorts, stuff like that can visit.

- Cheaters.

- A heart-shaped hot tub. Sex-oriented.

- Mirrors on the ceiling.

A garage motel, if you know

what those are. We learned the hard way.

When we first moved here, we didn't know

what a garage motel was for. Now we know.

They drive

into the parking lot, bing,

they get the signal

of the kidnapper's phone.

All units to the Princess Motel.

Room 17. Suspects are confirmed inside.

PD's out front.

We're coming up the back stairs.

This is police.

You're surrounded. We know you're inside.

It's time to go.

Go, go, go!

Down! Go, go!

Go! Go! Go!

Move! Move! Move!

- They're running!

- Suspects are running.

- Officers are searching for Boatwright.

- Hey! Stop!

- Go!

- Mr. Boatwright?

- Take him!

- Put your hands in the air!

Bedroom clear!

Suspects apprehended.

Suspect located.

Boatwright has been secured.

You have Jeffrey Boatwright.

He can't run. Can't go anywhere.

He told them, "You saved my life.

They were gonna k*ll me."

He was excited he'd been saved

by the good guys.

Team America saved him.

They cleaned him up,

and took him into custody

for the original robbery.

Not too many cases

are resolved when, you know,

you save a kidnapping victim

and then arrest him,

and that's exactly what happened.

He got saved as a victim

and arrested within moments.

We were feeling relief.

The fact that the case was over.

More importantly,

that we were able

to recover this numbskull,

who kept getting kidnapped,

without getting k*lled.

Everybody's responsible

for their own actions.

My brother wasn't a bad guy, he just

was a little careless, you could say.

We didn't grow up with our father,

and so he would run to the streets

and do things, you know?

He never had his life put together.

So, I think

a big part of him really wanted

to try to change his life around.

But he kept going back to,

you know, women and drugs

and doing things

he wasn't supposed to be doing.

I told them, "Give me an address.

I'll turn myself in.

"If not, come get me. This is my address.

I'm not running from you guys."

I missed so much out of my kids' lives.

No amount of money is worth

me missing out on my kids.

Trust me, I'm kicking myself

in the a*s to this day for it.

One day, I get home,

there's a card on the door.

Just says "FBI."

I just knew.

When you get that paper

in your hands that says,

"So-and-so versus the United States

of America," you don't stand a chance.

So, is it something to brag about?

Nah. I don't wanna brag about it.

That's why I'm wearing this.

You think you're bad,

think you're gangster?

You ain't nothing.

I don't ever talk about it

with anybody. No one knows.

It's something I did, but it's

not something I'm proud of, 'cause

I'm a decent human being, you know?

I just cut and ran.

I was bouncing between Carolina,

Georgia, and Tennessee.

I wasn't in one place.

But they're gonna be looking.

Where are they gonna look? Your family.

That's one thing

that really broke me down,

watching my kids' face,

and breaking that news,

"Maybe I'll see you next week

and maybe I won't."

And they give you that look.

It just gets to a breaking point.

When you start easing up

is when they start gassing up.

And that's what happened.

Yep. About four years on the run.

In a way, I wanted to get it over with.

In a way, I wanted to get it over with.

I mean

It is what it is.

I lost all my family

at the same time.

You know, holidays are not the same.

Gatherings are not the same.

Um, you know, what's supposed

to be a positive memory,

turns into something negative.

It's very hard to digest

that you love somebody so much

and that they can betray you like that.

Could he have k*lled somebody?

I don't know.

I'm thankful that he never did.

But you really never know the person

who you're sleeping next to.

How could you love me so much

and say you wanna build a life with me,

and have a family with me,

and then throw it all

in the garbage over money?

If I told you I'll give you $7.4 million,

but I will destroy your whole family,

what would you tell me?

Would you take the $7.4 million?

A marriage needs two things,

trust and respect.

If you lose respect for your partner,

or stop trusting them,

that's not a marriage anymore.

When I went to prison, I said,

"Move on with your life,

because I'll be in here for 17 years."

"I don't want you

to wait 17 years for me."

"Do what you have to do.

Try to have a family."

With him, I felt like

I had it all. He was my first true love.

And, um unfortunately, you know,

everything we went through in life and

You know, have it all to lose it all.

It hurt,

but time heals everything.

I'm happy she has the life

she always wanted. Two children.

I did choose money over family.

This robbery cost me

my American dream.

I had the house, I had a wife,

I just needed a child.

I'm still the same person,

but more educated.

I have a different perspective in life.

And

I think things over

a lot more than before.

We recovered somewhere

between 1.2 and 1.4 million dollars.

So, that leaves approximately

$6,000,000 that was unaccounted for.

That's the FBI question,

"Where is the money?"

We talk about it,

and we try to speculate as to,

"Maybe is there still

some out there somewhere?"

You know, it's possible.

Supposedly there's only,

what, 1.5 recovered?

You're gonna tell me

you don't think anybody else

wants to know where that money's at?

sh*t.

My honest opinion?

I think some of those guys

still have that money stashed somewhere.

I wish I would have stashed the money.

I was so stupid that I blew it.

I don't know where the rest

of that money went, man.

I know where my part went.

And it got stolen.

Ah, bills. Bills.

It gets expensive to be on the run.

Check 'em out in a few more years.

They'll probably move to another county.

Or move to Costa Rica!

They say I have money, but I don't.

I lost it. I don't know where it is.

I don't know if I spent it,

it's gone, it was stolen I don't know.

I don't have it.

My parents

used to tell me stories

before they put me to bed at night.

I've grown past that age.

I was the kind of guy

that you knew that could get stuff.

I was kinda like a mini-Amazon.

- Rare Pappy

- Pappy

Pappy Van Winkle bourbon.

It's liquid gold.

A barrel of Pappy bourbon

is worth an incredible $100,000.

It'd be like working

in a bank or Fort Knox

with the vault wide open with no guards.

Are you gonna do it

if you don't get caught?

It's whiskey, for God's sake.