CLEVELAND, Ohio — FBI agents on Thursday arrested a Cleveland man and accused him of helping to steal more than $300,000 during the carjacking of an ATM service truck in July.
Christion Sims, 23, and three others pointed guns at employees of Vantage Technical Services and sped off in their truck, according to court records.
Sims is charged in federal court in Cleveland with robbery and using a gun during a violent crime.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Dowdell Armstrong ordered Sims remain in federal custody. The case was sent to a grand jury that will decide how the case proceeds.
cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to Sims’ attorney Fernando Mack for comment.
Sims is the only one of the four to be charged so far.
FBI agents wrote in filings that they connected Sims to the robbery via surveillance videos from the store and the ATM truck, information from the infotainment system of the car the thieves used, cellphone data and records of Sims’ application for a renewal driver’s license he submitted two days after the robbery.
Videos and photos found on Sims’ phone showed him with a large stack of cash under his arms hours after the robbery and buying a 2017 BMW in cash at a Cleveland dealership two days later, court records say.
The robbery happened about 4:45 p.m. on July 29 at Lucky’s Quik Stop gas station on East 105th Street near Ostend Avenue in the city’s Glenville neighborhood.
A group of four people in a stolen Dodge Durango followed the truck as it made its rounds to several businesses, including at Lucky’s, court records say.
The ATM service employees stocked the cash machine inside the store and were walking back to their truck when three masked men, wearing gloves and carrying guns, jumped out of the Durango, according to court records.
The robbers quickly disarmed the employees and threatened to kill them, according to court records. They forced one employee up against a wall and another to the ground. A robber put a gun to the head of the employee on the ground, according to the filing.
One of the thieves jumped inside the ATM truck, while the other two ran back to the Durango. Both vehicles sped away and stopped on Somerset Avenue, about a quarter-mile away.
The group loaded bags of cash from the ATM truck into the Durango and sped away, the filing shows. Cleveland police found the truck.
About 75 minutes later, the stolen Durango was set ablaze in the parking lot of behind an apartment building on Lakeshore Boulevard near Winward Avenue in the city’s North Shore Collinwood neighborhood.
Vantage Technical Services and its parent company, Brinks, conducted an audit and found the group stole $333,300.
Three days later, Sims bought a 2017 BMW X5 at Empire Motors on Brookpark Road in Cleveland. He paid $17,025 in cash and took a video of an employee counting the cash during the purchase, according to court records.
Adam Ferrise covers federal courts at cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. You can find his work here.