Newport police nab 3 for March robbery

Deepa Bharath

Police arrested three men on July 25 on suspicion of tying up an ATM

technician at gunpoint, blindfolding him and robbing a teller machine

at a local bank branch, officials said.

The arrests came after a four-month investigation by Newport Beach

Police detectives into the March 16 incident at a Bank of America

branch in the 4100 block of MacArthur Boulevard, Sgt. Steve Shulman

said.

Police arrested 23-year-olds Peter Nguyen of Irvine and Thanh To

of Midway City, and 22-year-old Phylen Pen of Westminster. Shulman

said To, a former employee of the ATM servicing company, also helped

mastermind the heist.

Shulman said that on March 16, the three men approached a service

technician who had come to the branch to fix an ATM machine that was

out of order.

The men threatened him with a gun, tied and blindfolded him and

then entered the cash area of the ATM machine fleeing with “an

undisclosed, but significant amount of money,” Shulman said.

“The employee was not injured, but he was able to free himself and

call the police,” he said. That employee was not a suspect in the

robbery, Shulman said.

To immediately caught investigators’ attention because he was a

former employee of the ATM servicing company and knew the technology,

he said. Detectives obtained a warrant to search To’s home within

days of the robbery, Shulman said.

There they found detailed diagrams and instructions for the

robbery, he said.

“Although the evidence collected was linked to our crime, proving

Thanh To was associated with the evidence was in question,” Shulman

said. So he was released at the time without any charges being filed.

But detectives continued with their investigation, and on testing

the evidence, found fingerprints belonging to all three men on a

document that was a “how to” manual on conducting the robbery,

Shulman said.

To, Pen and Nguyen were arrested without incident. They are also

suspected of committing other similar crimes in Orange County,

Shulman said.

To is charged with two felony counts of robbery and one felony

count of conspiring to commit a crime, Pen was charged with two

felonies, including one alleging the use of a firearm, and Nguyen is

charged with one felony count of conspiring to commit a crime.

All three men are being held in Orange County Jail without bail.

Their next court hearing is scheduled for Aug. 27.