ST. LOUIS, MO. — People still believe that the robbery at ATM Solutions was one of the largest in St. Louis. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the 2010 ATM Solutions theft, which occurred on August 3, 2010, netted $6.6 million.
The Team
Most heist movies show a lot of people trying to pull off a crime. This real-life case was no different.
The idea for the hit was dreamed up by John Wesley Jones and Myron Kimble. Then you’ll need someone to go in and collect the money. The robbers were Ryechine Money, “Lil” Larry Newman, Aaron Hassan Johnson, and John Wesley Jones.
The inside job theory requires an ex-employee who was allegedly involved in the heist. They could work as a source for the FBI in the future.
Not Pictured: Ryechine Money, Eddie and Robert Oliphant, Jacobi Oliphant, Marrion Dotson, Sam Rahamn, Hussein “Vinny” Odeh, and Sherry Ann Young
The stolen money had to be hidden. In this case, that was done by James Wright, his sister Latunya Wright, brothers Eddie and Robert Oliphant, their nephew Jacobi Oliphant, and Annkeisha Welch.
Marrion Dotson was one of those who plotted to steal the money after they discovered where it was buried.
Sufian “Sam” Rahamn and Hussein “Vinny” Odeh, may have been unknowing accomplices to the crime.
The Heist
On August 2, 2010, around 6:05 am, a Pontiac Grand Prix pulled up in front of the ATM Solutions headquarters in St. Louis.
Four masked men got out of the vehicle and overpowered two guards at an ATM service firm. According to St. Louis police, they used duct tape to bind the first guard.
The robbers waited for a second guard to enter the vault. They were able to incapacitate him and leave the building with $6.6 million in one of the company’s armored vans. The money was put in several bags.
They drove the vehicle to Wright’s house on Evens Avenue in St. Louis, unloaded it, and then dropped it off at another location.
The following day, St. Louis police and the FBI surrounded a home in the 4000 block of Page, where they believed additional suspects were holed up. The FBI finally burst into the house and unleashed tear gas inside after a daylong standoff.
Nobody appeared to be at home. The officers spent the next hour or more emptying the house.
Rahman was the owner of Heavy Hitters, the custom-car company that, he claims, unknowingly worked on the automobile used in the crime.
Hussein “Vinny” Odeh, a Rahman employee, loaned John Wesley Jones the black Grand Prix while his Dodge Charger was in the shop—and had worked on the brakes and darkened the windows.
“He did it out of a good heart,” Rahman says in an interview with St. Louis Magazine. “Why would I give a car that’s registered to me for an armed robbery?”
Rahman stated that this is when he began to panic. He said that Latunya came in a few hours later and asked, “Are you still willing to sell your shop?” She came back an hour later with a duffle bag filled with what she said was $500,000. He took the money.
Playing checkers not chess
The scheme began to disintegrate quickly. When the FBI stepped into Heavy Hitters, they wanted to know how Rahman was involved in the heist.
At this point, Rahman fled to Milwaukee, where he lived for a decade. He later ended up in his home country of Jordan, near Israel and Iraq.
Latunya Wright and another woman were seen at a Walmart paying for bags with enormous sums held together by paper money straps. A Walmart employee reported the woman.
On August 4, 2010, two days after the crime, Jones crashed his Dodge Charger in the 4000 block of Page. When he was arrested, cops discovered a weapon and nearly $1.4 million in cash in the trunk of his car.
Two teens with ties to one of the ATM robbery suspects were kidnapped by Myron Kimble, Marrion Dotson, and Larry Romel Newman. All three were subsequently captured by police.
The FBI reports that it has apprehended James Wright, 32, of St. Louis, on a warrant related to the ATM Solutions robbery. Prosecutors in the United States have charged him with trafficking stolen items over state lines.
On November 15, Jones escaped from the Lincoln County, Missouri, jail. Two days later, he was discovered in an attic in East St. Louis.
Latunya Wright and Annkesha Welch were arrested in October. They were charged with transporting stolen goods from St. Louis to Atlanta.
Sentencing
Jacobi Oliphant was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the ATM Solutions cover-up.
Eddie Oliphant, of St. Louis County, and Robert Oliphant, of Buffalo, Missouri, both received three-year prison sentences for their roles in the 2010 ATM Solutions robbery.
Annkesha Welch was sentenced to 18 months in prison by the court. In August 2010, she helped steal an ATM Solutions vehicle and hide and move stolen money.
In connection with the ATM Solution Heist, Marrion Dotson was found guilty of kidnapping and given a sentence of 21 years in prison.
Myron Kimble was sentenced to 26 years and 6 months in prison
Aaron Johnson was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the judge. He was one of the ATM robbers.
John Wesley Jones received a 32-year prison sentence for his role in the ATM Solutions theft. Jones was not just the first thief, but also the mastermind behind the theft.
Ryechine A. Money was sentenced to 19 years in prison by the judge. He was one of the gang’s original members.
Larry Newman was sentenced to 25 years in jail for his role in the kidnapping and subsequent theft of the money.
Susan “Sam” Rahman, who is currently in the Middle East, has not yet been sentenced.
Hussein “Vinny” Odeh was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting he supplied a car used in the robbery and hiding some of the cash.
In St. Louis Circuit Court, Sherry Young admitted guilt to felony and misdemeanor charges for assisting Jones’ escape.
So, where DID the money go?
According to FBI Special Agent Lyonel Myrthil, the majority of the money looks to have been lost or stolen.
In a court document, Myrthil said that on August 3, police searched her home in the 4000 block of Page Avenue and Jones’ car. They found a bag with an unspecified amount of money.
Myrthil said that Latunya Wright handed her brother $100,000, which he hid at a girlfriend’s place and later took with the help of the girlfriend’s brother.
According to the document, a witness told the FBI that on August 24 in Atlanta, James and Latunya Wright argued about his share. Latunya paid James $20,000 at the time, but James demanded $50,000 and threatened her if she didn’t provide it.
In the affidavit, another witness said that James Wright had admitted to getting paid to help move money. He “felt like choking Latunya” because she didn’t pay him the whole $50,000. It also asserts that some of the money is “in somebody’s lawn in Texas.”
The group grew over time to incorporate friends and relatives of existing members. Eventually, people involved began to shift the money.
A large amount was sent to a storage facility in the Bellefontaine Neighborhoods neighborhood. Latunya Wright asked one of her two uncles, Robert Oliphant, to go to a Bellefontaine storage facility and get some cash for her. She began to wonder if Robert had stolen the money after the fact. However, she was unable to disclose it to the authorities.
Police found the storage container in North County, but their bolt cutters wouldn’t slice through the padlock, so they had to contact the Riverview Fire Department. Back inside, they found the back hatch window shattered and three sacks of cash (one huge, two tiny) remaining.
As for Rahman’s money, he somehow lost it between Milwaukee and Jordan.
“I sold the shop for half a million, and I only collected $120,000. And some of that money was still in Milwaukee, and I still owe bills—it was a lost, lost situation,” Rahman tells St. Louis Magazine.
Where are they now?
In 2021, Latunya Wright was recorded on surveillance footage pointing a gun at a customer at the store she owned.
Once Wright finished her time in federal prison, she seemed to have forgotten about her past in St. Louis. Upon coming to Texas, she launched MZBIZ Tax Services.
At her place of business on March 25, she assaulted a woman.
Everyone else seemed to be either still locked up somewhere or purposefully avoiding publicity.
Rahman is still in the Middle East as far as 2019.