A Man Stole More Than $7 Million from the Miami Airport in a Crime that Mirrored 'Goodfellas'

Karls Monzon had no criminal record, but he managed to orchestrate one of the biggest robberies in American history out of pure desperation to get rich quick and start a family.

Monzon’s heist involved him employing some friends and family to rob a Brink’s truck that was unloading cash into a warehouse at the Miami International Airport. They got away with $7.4 million, but his plan went awry when one of his accomplices wouldn’t stop flaunting his new wealth.

Eventually, the FBI caught on and arrested Monzon and his friends, but some of the loot remains unfound. 

The crime was likened to the Lufthansa heist, in which six masked and armed men broke into the Lufthansa Airlines cargo terminal at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport overnight on December 11, 1978, and stole $5.8 million in cash and jewels. The crime inspired the 1990 movie Goodfellas. 

Monzon claimed he hadn’t seen the film and only found out after committing his own heist that it appeared he copied the crime thriller.

Monzon moved to Miami from Cuba in 1989, an experience which he likened to “going to another planet” in an episode of the docuseries Heist.

“When I was in Cuba as a kid, I saw in movies and television that in the United States if you work hard, you can get what you want,” he said. “No matter how hard you work in Cuba, there was no future. That’s why I wanted to come to the United States.”

Monzon’s American dream began humbly. He worked for a tow company and met his wife, Brandy, formerly known as Cinnamon, in the early 1990s. The couple experienced multiple failed pregnancies and wanted to adopt, but their finances didn’t allow it. By the 2000s, Monzon was desperate to have a family and started to mull over the idea of a great heist. 

His friend, Onelio Diaz, worked as a Brink’s armored truck driver and guard, driving shipments that landed at the Miami airport from a bank in Germany. Those shipments averaged between $80 million and $100 million per flight. 

Diaz and other guards would take the bags of money from the tarmac to a warehouse at the airport perimeter to clear customs. The guards would examine the bags and then drive them in the armored Brink’s trucks to the Miami branch of the Federal Reserve.

Diaz had noticed security issues in his transports—the guards didn’t close the warehouse doors when they inspected the money because there was no air conditioning, there were no armed guards at the warehouse and the security cameras didn’t work. It was the perfect scenario for the heist. 

Diaz knew they could pull off the theft.

Before the big day, Monzon spent considerable time researching the plan. 

He rented a room at a hotel that overlooked the airport’s tarmac and warehouse at least eight times to watch guards transfer money from airplanes to the warehouse. 

“I was just back and forth every week. One week in the north side, one week in the south side to make sure they never changed their routine,” Monzon told Salon. 

When it came time to execute, Monzon employed his brother-in-law, Jeffery Boatwright, to be the driver and his uncle-in-law, Conrado Perera, to help. Monzo’s co-worker, Roberto Perez, would serve as the crew’s lookout.

The masked robbers ordered warehouse and security personnel to lie on the floor while they loaded bags into a pickup truck. At least one of them came armed with a gun, but no one was injured.

They made off with about $7.4 million on November 6, 2005. 

However, Monzon didn’t realize that involving Boatwright would lead to his downfall. 

His brother-in-law immediately went on a spending spree, buying expensive items like Rolex watches along with drugs, alcohol, prostitutes and expensive nights at strip clubs. His lawyer said during sentencing in 2006 that Boatwright spent nearly all of his $1.4 million share.

Angered and worried about Boatwright’s behavior, Monzon hired a group of men to kidnap Boatwright with the intention of scaring him into silence. Monzon did this twice, but during the second planned kidnapping, the perps instead held Boatwright hostage in exchange for more money from Monzon.

Monzon bought an AK-47 and concocted a plan to kill the kidnappers and rescue Boatwright, but the FBI had been on him for months and arrested Monzon before he could intervene. 

Agents rescued, and then arrested, Boatwright. 

Soon after Monzon and Boatwright were nabbed, federal agents arrested their other accomplices. 

Though Monzon’s wife, Brandy, didn’t take part in the heist, she knew about it afterward and didn’t turn in her husband. She was charged in 2006 as an accessory and was sentenced to almost three years in prison. Monzon and Brandy then divorced. She now has two daughters.

Monzon pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison. He served nine and was released in 2016. He spent another eight months living in a halfway house.

Diaz served 14 of his 16-year sentence. Boatwrite served 11 of his 17 years and died shortly after his release. Perera was on the run for four years and eventually served 10 years in federal prison. Their other accomplices spent three and four years in prison.

Anthony Lacosta, the chief federal prosecutor on the case, said at the time that the robbery was “if not the biggest, one of the biggest armed robberies in Florida history.”

Monzon still lives in Miami and works as a truck driver. 

“This robbery cost me my American dream," Monzon said in Heist. “I had the house, I had a wife, I just needed a child.”

In May 2006, the FBI found more than $1 million on the property of one of the robbers. The remaining $6 million has never been recovered.