Re: Nickels found
3.6 million nickels taken from Federal Reserve found buried in Redland<br /><br />BY MARTIN MERZER<br /><br />mmerzer@herald.com<br /><br /><br />Police searching for marijuana plants in South Miami-Dade County discovered an entirely different stash Friday -- a buried wooden box filled with 3.6 million nickels that disappeared last year en route to a Federal Reserve facility in New Orleans.<br /><br /><br />''They're all still in the Federal Reserve bags,'' said Miami-Dade police spokesman Joey Giordano. We think we got them all.''<br /><br /><br />Officers inspecting the property at 14800 SW 184th St. in the Redland first discovered an ice cooler filled with nickels, then remembered that a tractor-trailer loaded with $180,000 worth of the currency went missing just before Christmas, officials said.<br /><br /><br />They called in the metal detectors -- and hit pay dirt.<br /><br /><br />They found the buried treasure near a barn in the rear of the property, Giordano said.<br /><br /><br />Many questions remained unanswered Friday, including who concealed the nickels and the whereabouts of the truck driver, Angel Ricardo Mendoza, now believed to be out of the country. Police called him a suspect in the case.<br /><br /><br />''If only I had a nickel for every question about this case,'' Giordano said.<br /><br /><br />Mendoza vanished in late December, several days after picking up the 45,000 pounds of nickels at the Federal Reserve building in East Rutherford, N.J., on Dec. 17. Five days later, the Freightliner 18-wheeler was found, empty, at a Flying J truck stop in Fort Pierce.<br /><br /><br />A representative of Mendozer's employer, Geler Transportation of Miami, working under contract for the U.S. Mint, said the company last heard from the driver on Dec. 20, the day the nickels were due in New Orleans.<br /><br /><br />On Friday, a task force consisting of Miami-Dade officers and federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration Custom Enforcement and the FBI searched the property in response to a tip that marijuana was being grown there, according to Judy Orihuela, an FBI spokeswoman.<br /><br /><br />They found 88 suspected marijuana plants -- and the nickels, she said.<br /><br /><br />Residents of the property were being questioned Friday.<br /><br /><br />''We're still trying to sort this out,'' Orihuela said.
