2 LAX cargo handlers arrested, charged in theft of $224k worth of gold bars

(The AEGIS Alliance) – Two guys that were employed by a cargo handling company and worked at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) have been placed under arrest as of Tuesday during morning hours on charges that the two men stole gold bars worth $224,000 that were scheduled to be shipped to New York, according to prosecutors.

South Los Angeles locals 38-year-old Marlon Moody and 35-year-old Brian Benson is facing a grand jury indictment on one count each of conspiracy and theft of international cargo, the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office pointed out in a press release.

The two were apprehended without any incident by special agents along with the FBI and were anticipated to make their preliminary appearances in a downtown Los Angeles federal courtroom on mid-day Tuesday.

The 4 stolen gold bars were part of a bigger cargo shipment that came from Australia, and Moody is implicated in stealing them after a portion of the shipment had been separated from the rest of it when it reached LAX on April 22 in 2020.

Both of the men were employed by Alliance Ground International, which gives the LAX airport ground handling services.

A bank based in Canada had shipped 2,000 gold bars, each with a weight of one kilogram were also valued at about $56,000 apiece, by means of Singapore Airlines. During a stop at LAX, the gold had been taken out of the airplane and safeguarded, however, when the inventory was checked that night, it revealed that one container with 25 bars in it was missing, prosecutors stated.

The next morning, Moody purportedly found the missing container nearby the Singapore Airlines cargo stockroom and consequently stole 4 gold bars.

Benson drove a company van to pick up Moody and both exchanged text messages concerning Moody’s gold bar stash since other workers had been inside the van with them, authorities stated.

The indictment alleges that when the two went home from work, the accused men met at a close-by parking area and Moody handed Benson one of the gold bars.

Moody had purportedly left the container along with the remainder of the gold on a conveyor belt, then other cargo handlers discovered it eventually that same day which led to an investigation into the missing 4 gold bars.

Moody is implicated in giving one of the bars he took to a member of his family three weeks afterward, asking them to exchange it for an automobile or an amount of money. Prosecutors state he stashed the remaining two bars in the backyard of his home by burying them.

The FBI managed to recover all 4 gold bars within a couple of weeks, according to officials.

The accused men are potentially facing 15 years in federal prison if found guilty on the two counts.

Jeffrey Childers – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.