MovieChat Forums > The Shield (2002) Discussion > The money train robbery wasn't even that...

The money train robbery wasn't even that big...

posted 4 years ago by Coleburg83 (684)
11 replies | jump to latest

They got around $3 million. That's nothing to these major drug organizations that import large quantities of heroin and cocaine. They would look for the thief of course, but it wouldn't turn into this huge manhunt that would draw lots of attention.

When they hit the money train originally, I thought they had ripped off tens of millions. And that's why it was such a big deal. You see drug shipments that make the news seized that have far, far more than that. Well into the tens or even hundreds of millions of heroin/coke in a single load.

[–] GordonGartrelle (1267) 4 years ago

I guess they just wanted to pick a realistic amount, but yeah, 3 mil divided by 4 and being given to a bunch of dudes that don't look like they have any sense of financial planning, isn't going to last long.

[–] Coleburg83 (684) 4 years ago

But like I said, there have been many drug busts that are far in excess of that. This was supposed to be months and months of profits from a major drug and crime syndicate. A much bigger robbery figure would have still been realistic and would have made much more sense with the huge response from the Armenians. Rather than just $3,000,000 that would be like one shipment of heroin.

There have been busts in California with drug figures seized into the billions. From more than a decade before the Shield.

[–] Bloodworth79 (5571) 4 years ago

3 million is a lot of. Money...

Buy a nice house under 500,000

Save 100,000 for taxes the next 10 years

Then have fun with the rest

[–] Coleburg83 (684) 4 years ago

It's a lot of money, but there are routinely drug busts where product/cash is taken worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Even billions.

$3,000,000 being ripped off a supposedly major crime syndicate didn't seem to warrant the level of scrutiny they showed.

[–] Bloodworth79 (5571) 4 years ago

Even 15 years ago?

[–] Coleburg83 (684) 4 years ago

Yes, even 15 years ago. There were drug busts worth into the billions in the 80s and 90s.

A significant major shipment of heroin alone should be worth many times that. Much less all the money obtained from a wide variety of activities.

They should made the robbery more like $30M instead of $3M

[–] Bloodworth79 (5571) 4 years ago

Crazy....

[–] BreakbeatSavant (413) 4 years ago

My memory from 15 years ago is kind of sketchy but didn't they lose a big chunk of the money before only recovering a portion of it that came out to 3 mil?

[–] LockardTheGOAT (342) 4 years ago

No, they mentioned at the beginning of S3 that it was only 2.1 million that was robbed.

Always found it odd how this mob's giant money laundering operation consisted of so little

[–] TandyMan (10367) 4 years ago

Potentially fair criticism. I'll pay closer to attention to how things go down when I rewatch this. But yeah. Drug shipments and transactions get lost all the time. It's just a write off to these people.

[–] Gd5150 (11030) 4 years ago

Well the show tended to opt for realism. Not everything can be a 10 figure payoff. Especially in a dump like Farmington.