DORAL, Fla. — Police released video Tuesday they say shows a nearly $2 million iPhone heist at a South Florida warehouse ― and the confidence trick beforehand that led an unsuspecting FedEx worker to give one of the perpetrators access to the devices. Police say they’re now looking for that suspect, having already arrested his accomplice.
Police said it happened on March 17, at the FedEx Ship Center at 10000 NW 21st St. in Doral.
Doral police said a Florida Highway Patrol trooper later took Jeffery Lydell Moore, 61, of Seneca, South Carolina, into custody on Interstate 75 near Gainesville as he tried to get away with the electronic loot.
But they said his accomplice, Robert Rashawn Soto, is still on the run as of Tuesday.
Soto, 49, is accused of tricking a FedEx employee with fake badges and documents as he impersonated the legitimate warehouse manager at a Medley freight forwarder who was supposed to handle the shipment.
“(He) was able to build a rapport with an individual and then gain access to the delivery area,” Doral Police Department Chief Edwin Lopez said at a news conference on Tuesday.
He and Moore loaded up a U-Haul truck with phones until the real warehouse manager arrived. Authorities said he had the FedEx employees put a halt to Moore and Soto loading the phones, but they managed to take off with 38 boxes of iPhone 17 Pro Max devices. The nearly 1,800 phones were worth $1,896,674.
But Lopez said that was only about a quarter of what the duo could have ended up stealing.
“That could have been 138 boxes,” he said. “So it would have been a lot more money.”
Investigators said they used AirTags, license plate readers “and other means of technology” to track the stolen shipment up the I-75 corridor, eventually intercepting the box truck in Alachua County and taking Moore into custody.
Police are now asking for the public’s help finding Soto.
“This person is known in this community in South Florida,” Lopez said. “There’s someone out there who knows him. We’re asking the community, if you know this individual, do the right thing and call us because this person needs to be behind bars.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Doral police.
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