SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Puerto Rican police officer assigned to a DEA anti-drugs unit has been charged with carrying out a $515,000 armored car heist with three relatives and another man, and the FBI said Saturday it is studying whether they were involved in other robberies.
Angel Fernandez Ramos, an officer who worked with a Drug Enforcement Administration task force for four years, was charged Friday in the robbery staged a day earlier outside a bank in San Juan.
Authorities say the officer robbed the Loomis Fargo armored car with his father, Angel Luis Fernandez Torres; his uncles Manuel and Luis Fernandez Torres; and a fourth man, Saul Moreno Nazario. All five men were in custody and the money was recovered, the FBI said.
Luis Fraticelli, special agent in charge of FBI operations in this U.S. Caribbean territory, said agents would investigate whether the five men were linked to several armored car heists that have gone unsolved since 1998.
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"This has similarities with other robberies," he said.
DEA spokesman Waldo Santiago said the agency has a system for checking the reliability of police officers who work with the drug task force. "Unfortunately, no system is perfect," he said.
After the men were charged Friday, Police Superintendent Pedro Toledo said he was working to rid the force of corrupt officers. "We are cleaning up the house," he said.
Thursday's robbery was the second armored car heist this year, authorities said.
In March, gunmen stole roughly $1 million from an armored car as two Loomis Fargo employees picked up money from a bank in San Juan's financial district. Several suspects were arrested in that robbery and are facing federal charges.
