Four Men Indicted for Using Jaws of Life in ATM Robbery Spree Across DC and Maryland

A 27-count indictment unsealed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charges four men with organizing and carrying out a string of armed robberies that used hydraulic rescue tools known as the Jaws of Life to extract automated teller machines from convenience stores.

The named defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, multiple counts of robbery, and firearms offenses. The indictment, returned by a grand jury and announced by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, details a scheme in which the men allegedly deployed the heavy equipment, normally used by emergency responders to cut victims from wrecked vehicles, to tear ATMs out of store walls during overnight raids.

The scope of the charged conduct covers at least nine separate convenience-store ATM thefts in the District of Columbia and Maryland. Each incident involved forced entry, deployment of the Jaws of Life to remove the cash machines, and subsequent transport of the ATMs to locations where they were broken open for the cash inside.

The indictment lists specific dates, store locations, and stolen amounts but does not release an aggregate loss figure.

The charges convert the prior investigative stage, in which the men were arrested and held on complaint, into a formal prosecution. Arraignment must occur within the next 30 days under federal speedy-trial rules. Conviction on the conspiracy and robbery counts carries statutory maximums of 20 years per count; the firearms offenses add mandatory minimum sentences of five or seven years that must run consecutively.

Downstream, the U.S. Attorney’s Office must now turn over discovery materials to defense counsel within deadlines set by local rules. The defendants face pretrial detention hearings where prosecutors are expected to cite the hydraulic-equipment robberies as evidence of danger to the community and risk of flight.

A conviction would also trigger full restitution proceedings to the affected convenience-store owners and ATM operators. The case will be heard by a district judge assigned under the court’s random case-allocation system.

This indictment forms part of a documented national uptick in ATM thefts that employ construction and rescue equipment rather than traditional explosives or torches. The technique first drew federal attention in 2022 when similar “smash-and-grab” rings surfaced in California and the Midwest; the D.C. indictment marks one of the first uses of the Jaws of Life charged in the District of Columbia.

Primary sources: U.S. Department of Justice · U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia