Some people watch too many movies (those movies being Ocean’s 8 and 11 through 13 and maybe even Shawshank Redemption). In a move directly out of a heist movie, criminals broke into an Apple Store at the Alderwood Mall in the northern Seattle suburb of Lynnwood. Their means of entry? Digging a hole through the adjacent Seattle Coffee Gear.
As reported by King 5 News, the break-in occurred the night of Sunday, April 2nd. The thieves pried open the door to the coffee gear retailer during closing hours, per KOMO News, where they made their way to the bathroom to cut a 2ft x 1.5ft hole in the wall, granting them access to the back room of the abutting Apple Store. According to the Lynnwood Police, the burglars made away with 436 iPhones, worth roughly half a million dollars.
Eric Marks, Seattle Coffee Gear’s regional retail manager, tells King 5 that he believes the perpetrators had to be familiar with the layout of the Apple Store in order to know how to access it from SCG. “I would have never suspected we were adjacent to the Apple Store, how it wraps around I mean,” Marks said. “So, someone really had to think it out and have access to the mall layout.” The thieves were able to avoid cutting through any pipes or setting off any store alarms in the process. SCG CEO Mike Atkinson posted a photo of the damages to his Twitter account.
While none of Seattle Coffee Gear’s inventory was stolen, they were left with $1,500 in repairs to replace locks and patch up the hole in the bathroom wall. Overall, though, Marks states he is happy that no staff for either business were present during the robbery and that no one was harmed.
Per King 5, Lynnwood police do have surveillance footage from the burglary, but it has not been made public yet. As of press time, no arrests have been made.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
