April 4 (UPI) -- The FBI and Los Angeles Police Department are investigating the biggest cash heist in the city's history after burglars made off with as much as $30 million on Easter Sunday.
The incident, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, happened at the Gardaworld building in Sylmar.
Gardaworld is a Canadian private security firm that stored cash from businesses all across the region in its Sylmar facility.
Burglars reportedly broke in through the roof to access the vault where the money was stored.
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Footage of the facility also showed what appeared to be a boarded up hole in the side of the facility with a pile of rubble next to it.
It is unclear how they entered the vault without setting off alarms, but investigators determined it must have been a sophisticated group behind the heist.
The operation was so stealthy, the building's owners did not notice the break-in had occurred until Monday.
Very few people would have known how much money was stored in the nondescript building. Investigators are trying to determine whether the group had inside knowledge of the facility prior to the heist.
Scott Selby, author of Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History, told the L.A. Times that investigators will be "looking around the globe for crimes with a similar M.O."
"As technology progresses and the world gets small, there are a lot of ways you can mess up and get caught," Selby said. "With touch DNA, the slightest mistake can expose the identity of a member of the crew, leading authorities to eventually identify their associates."
The previous biggest cash heist in L.A. history happened in September 1997 when burglars stole $18.9 million from the former Dunbar Armored facility. The suspects eventually were caught.
Sunday's theft comes nearly two years after robbers stole as much as $100 million in jewelry and other valuables from a Brink's big rig at a southern California truck stop.
