ATM refill bag stolen from UW Credit Union in Wauwatosa held $140,000 in cash

In late July, an ATM refill bag full of $140,000 in cash was stolen from the UW Credit Union in Wauwatosa. Nearly five months later, police are still searching for the suspect.

On July 31, an employee of Thillens armored car company told Wauwatosa police she had set the bag of cash next to her to refill the drive-thru ATM at UW Credit Union, 6510 W. State St., when the theft occurred just before 3 p.m., according to a probable cause statement included in a warrant request for the ongoing criminal investigation.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm requested the warrant on Aug. 19 to serve to Verizon for records and information related to an identified phone number, including communications and location data, which could serve as evidence in eventually charging a suspect.

According to Wisconsin state statutes, theft of over $100,000 is a Class F felony punishable by a fine of $25,000, a state prison sentence of 12 years or both.

That same day, Aug. 19, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Jack Davila issued the warrant for the Wauwatosa Police Department to serve to Verizon.

According to the probable cause statement:

After the armored car company employee set the ATM bag down, a heavily-tinted white Ford Escape with no registration plates drove by without stopping.

Soon after, the same vehicle returned. But this time, it stopped.

A suspect wearing dark clothing and a ski mask exited from the vehicle's rear passenger side door, and the Thillens employee noticed there were three other people inside the Escape, all wearing ski masks.

The suspect grabbed the ATM bag and quickly jumped back inside the vehicle, which fled westbound on West State Street.

Another officer conducting a check of the area located the Ford Escape parked in a city-owned lot at 7470 Blanchard St.

The officer found the vehicle unoccupied, save for the empty ATM bag laying on the floor, an iPhone, gloves and a ski mask.

Wauwatosa Police Department Detective Kirk Will ran the vehicle information through the nationwide FLOCK system, which uses artificial intelligence cameras to read and track vehicle license plates.

He found that three days before the theft in Wauwatosa, the vehicle had been in Houston, Texas ― "a known area where crews are trained in the stealing of ATMs and related thefts."

The narrative provided in the statement does not include all known facts related to the case, only the essential information necessary to establishing probable cause for obtaining the phone records, the detective wrote.

The Journal Sentinel requested the incident report from the Wauwatosa Police Department on Dec. 10, but has not yet received it.

But Wauwatosa Police Sgt. Abby Pavlik did say that it is still an open investigation.

"We have persons of interest that we are attempting to locate," Pavlik said.

Contact Claudia Levens at clevens@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @levensc13.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tosa police investigating theft of $140K from armored car employee