Detectives in Tacoma arrested a man in connection to December’s “movie-style” burglary of a Bellevue Rare Coins in Tacoma.
According to court documents, Robert Mearl McGee was charged on Jan. 25 and accused of cutting a hole in the wall of a vacant building and stealing $300,000 worth of gold coins, silver coins, gold bars, and silver bars.
Bellevue Rare Coins’ owner, Eric Hoolahan, said the burglars broke into the vacant building next door. They used a sledgehammer to break through the cinderblock and a saw to cut through the drywall to get into Hoolahan’s business.
He said he thinks the burglars knew the room’s layout because they put something on a pole to block a motion sensor in that room. It tripped an alarm, but they avoided the camera in the room so when the owner checked in real-time, he only saw an empty room.
“I think that was the goal was to make it look like a malfunction,” said Hoolahan. “It’s very strange, they understood quite a few things here.”
Prosecutors say about $5,000 in damage was done.