Police Suspect ATM Thefts Linked
SAY FIVE OR SIX OTHER BANKS
HIT IN SOUTH FLORIDA

By JOE SEELIG

LAKE PLACID — Police investigators suspect the thefts of at least two other ATM thefts in South Florida may be linked to a suspect now in custody in Highlands County.

Based upon an investigation by the Lake Placid Police Department into the Dec. 31 theft of an ATM machine from the Lake Placid branch of Highlands Independent Bank, the Hendry County Sheriff’s Office arrested Clewiston resident Jesus Antonio Sanchez, 42, of 1806 Matthew Loop on Jan. 24.

Sanchez was booked Jan. 26 into Highlands County Jail on charges of burglary of a structure or conveyance, grand theft more than $100,000 and committing grand theft using a vehicle to damage a property and is being held on $31,000 bail.

The subjects stole an excavator machine from the Walgreens work site at Interlake Boulevard, broke out the machine, loaded it onto a truck and hauled it away.

Witnesses to the Lake Placid case reportedly saw two men using a bulldozer late on New Year’s Eve, doing something suspicious with another piece of heavy equipment at the site from which the Highlands Independent Bank’s ATM was later recovered, unopened.

The witnesses reportedly approached the suspects and asked them what they were doing. Unconvinced, they called the sheriff’s office.
It was called in as a burglary in progress, off of State Road 70, southeast of Lake Placid. Highlands County sheriff’s deputies who arrived at the scene about 9:15 p.m. found the ATM dumped into a canal.

Someone reportedly returned to the site about 11 a.m. the following day.

“We believe there is a ring of them,” said Lake Placid police officer James Fansler. “We’re the first
this far north. There have been five or six similar incidents in other counties.”

Fansler said that on Dec. 13, a Cape Coral bank’s ATM was similarly victimized as the Highlands Independent Bank. And before that on Oct. 27 the Old Cypress Bank was burglarized in Clewiston. Sanchez is a suspect in both cases, Fansler said.

Sanchez became a suspect when the Clewiston Police Department provided Fansler with Sanchez’s photograph. The witnesses immediately and independently of each other identified Sanchez as one of the two men they saw that night, from a six-photo lineup, according to a Lake Placid arrest narrative.

Sanchez reportedly worked briefly for the Gulf Group Inc., the construction company doing the work at the site where the ATM was recovered.

The superintendent, Ken Barry, for the Gulf Group, told police that Sanchez would have had access to the job site and the combinations to the locks. A locked combination lock was opened without force to access the gate to the construction site.

Barry told police that Sanchez was hired as a heavy equipment operator, had operated an excavator, like the one used at the Walgreens site to steal the ATM, and a bulldozer, like the one used to attempt to open the ATM vault.