Stop And Steal

A Brinks truck spilled $300,000. For dozens of bystanders it was 'finders keepers.' Take this poll. What would you do?

The back doors of an armored truck fly open and bags of cash fall to the street. The truck drives on. Anywhere from 50 to 100 people start scooping up the loot.

Whose money is it now?

Brinks Home Security reported it lost about $300,000 in a debacle like this last week. The police in Oak Park, Ill., say anyone caught with this cash could face jail time.

Brinks stinks at armored security. (Photo Credit: Chris Sampson, via Wikimedia Commons.)

How did the doors fly open? No explanation. The FBI is investigating. Most likely some dumbass Brinks employee left the doors ajar.

Some security force they’ve got going there.

Brinks has declined to comment.

And this is not the first time this has happened. In 2018, a Brinks truck spilled an estimated $600,000 along Interstate 70 in Indianapolis.

“Bags of money were falling out of the back onto the interstate,” ISP Corporal Brock McCooe told a local CBS News station at the time. “Sort of something out of a movie scene, where you have bills, loose bills flying all over the interstate, vehicles stopping, people getting out of their cars.”

Too bad, so sad for Brinks and anyone who would hire a security company that can’t keep it’s tailgate doors locked.

It’s difficult to defend anyone who scoops up something that doesn’t belong to them. But I will also say that the little people who find cash in the street are no where near as criminally culpable as this iconic armored car company.

As reported in Business Blunders in February, Brinks became history’s first armored-car company to admit to criminal wrongdoing. That’s when one of its subsidiaries agreed to pay $42 million to settle criminal allegations from the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

The settlement agreement enumerated millions in suspicious shipments between San Diego, Miami and Tijuana.

And Brinks basically admitted to serving as a money mule.

“For years, Brink’s moved large sums domestically and across the Southwest border without required … controls, exposing the U.S. financial system to a heightened risk of money laundering, including from narcotics trafficking and other illicit activity,” FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki said in a press release.

I strive to be as honest and law abiding as I can, but I’m not usually put to the test like this. I’d like to think I would do the right thing, but I truly don’t know what I’d do if I saw wads of cash left in the street – especially if I thought I’d get away with some of it.

Former FBI agent Mike Driscoll told Chicago’s CBS News that the contestants in this game of ‘finders keepers’ won’t be easy to track.

“In incident like this when you’re talking about loose cash, that's very, very difficult,” he said “Law enforcement is going to have to rely on old fashioned investigative techniques. Looking at surveillance cameras, interviewing witnesses.”

So Business Blunders readers, what would you do?

Please take this quick poll and leave a comment or two. We’ll go over the results on Saturday.

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