A string of daring daylight heists in Los Angeles where gang members held up armored trucks at gunpoint and got away with millions of dollars had played out like a Hollywood movie — but were recently busted by cops.
The sophisticated, lightning-quick robberies took place across the city over the last two years, with the thieves — clad in ski masks and brandishing AR-15 assault weapons — targeting vehicles picking up or delivering bags of cash at banks, fast-food restaurants, markets and credit unions.
When the time came to strike, the so-called “Chesapeake Bandits” — now linked to the Crips and Black P Stone gangs — would force security guards to the ground at gunpoint, zip-tie them, and grab wads of bills from the armored vehicle before fleeing within a matter of seconds.
The Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI, who jointly investigated the crimes, now believe the group planned the robberies from a home on Chesapeake Avenue in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles, earning their nickname, The Los Angeles Times reported.
FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles office, Donald Alway, said the criminals would conduct surveillance on targeted locations using multiple vehicles and personnel in the lead up to the precision heists.
The group had drivers who would remain in their vehicles during the robberies, he added.
“The defendants in this case and the other co-conspirators are heavily armed and pointed their weapons at the victims,” which in each case were security guards, US Attorney Martin Estrada said at a news conference at the FBI’s LA headquarters in Westwood last month.
Several of the suspects had met each other while serving time in state prison, according to court records.
Federal prosecutors last year charged two of the key suspects involved in the heists: half-brothers Deneyvous Hobson, 36, and James Russell Davis, 34.
According to a search warrant affidavit, Davis is a member of the West Boulevard Crips, while Hobson is affiliated the Black P Stones.
However, the group’s signature crime sprees continued while those suspected ringleaders were jailed. Another suspect was later found dead in suspicious circumstances and a fourth was killed by police while fleeing a raid.
The crew is believed to have first struck in February 2022 when three of its members approached an armored car driver picking up cash from a Wescom Credit Union in Hawthorne. He forced the guard to the ground at gunpoint, FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Cardenas wrote in an affidavit.
They grabbed bags of cash, checks and the victim’s weapon after taking it from the holster and fled in a white Honda Accord with $166,640, according to court records obtained by The Post.
But that was just the beginning.
Over the next year, the crew held up armored car drivers outside a Bank of America branch in Inglewood, a 99 Cents Only Store on Crenshaw Boulevard and a check-cashing business at the intersection of La Brea Avenue and Adams Boulevard, according to the affidavit.
In June 2023, a Brinks armored car pulled into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven at the intersection of Florence Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard.
As he returned with the money, a man wearing a white jumpsuit stepped out of a white Lexus SUV holding a rifle, Detective Emily Delph of the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division wrote in a search warrant affidavit.
He pushed the worker to the ground and took the money while a second suspect aimed a rifle on the driver inside the truck. “Let’s go!” the driver of the Lexus shouted. “Hurry up!”
Less than three weeks later, the bandits held up another Brinks driver — this time at a Taco Bell.
One of the suspects wore a white painter suit and trained an AR-15 at the driver before he handed over his keys to one of the accomplices and they took off in the truck, which was later found abandoned.
In the final heist connected to the group, a Brinks driver was robbed while filling ATMs in South Los Angeles the morning of Oct. 16.
According Delph investigators also linked Hobson and Davis to a Jadie Lee Young Jr, a 30-year-old member of the West Boulevard Crips. He’d served 12 years in prison for assault and had been contacted by the pair during the robberies.
Delph wrote in a search warrant affidavit which phone records showed Young had also been near the site of some of the robberies when they occurred.
However, before he could be arrested Young’s body was found December 20 last year on the side of a road in Inglewood with a bullet wound to his head. His death is being investigated by the LAPD.
In her affidavit, Delph said she discovered Young had been communicating with another person during the robberies on a number registered to Zeff Rocco, an East Coast Crip who’d done prison time for carjacking.
Investigators found further evidence which linked him to the heists and on March 21 this year, a SWAT team gathered at a Reseda Boulevard apartment building to serve a search and arrest warrant on the suspect.
“Zeff Rocco, this is the LAPD!” an officer shouted, according to body camera footage released last week.
“Come out with your hands up and surrender immediately!”
LAPD said they also made contact with the suspect by phone and instructed him to come outside and surrender.
Moments later, Rocco jumped from his third-floor apartment armed with an assault rifle. He momentarily dropped the gun while trying to get away and went to reach for it, according to surveillance footage. Police repeatedly warned him to “let it go” before shooting him dead.
According to the LAPD, the rifle Rocco carried was a semiautomatic Ghost Gun, the department said in a statement.
Later that day, detectives arrested Disaac Jones, 33, after his DNA was found on a glove left inside the getaway car used in one of the heists, according to Delph’s affidavit.
He pleaded not guilty to two counts of robbery and was released on $150,000 bond.
Davis pleaded guilty in February to robbery and gun charges, admitting he cased the Wescom Credit Union and acted as a lookout, according to The Los Angeles Times report.
He faces a minimum of 10 years when he is sentenced in June. Hobson has pleaded not guilty and is set to stand trial in September.
