Three armed suspects robbed a Brink's employee who was servicing an ATM outside a Chase Bank branch in south suburban Lansing on Tuesday morning, according to police. The employee was held at gunpoint and a substantial amount of U.S. currency was stolen before the suspects fled the scene, and no injuries were reported.
Lansing officers were called at about 8:53 a.m. Tuesday to the Chase Bank at 3115 Ridge Road, according to The Lansing Journal. CBS News Chicago's CBS News similarly reported that a Brink's armored truck driver was robbed at gunpoint outside the bank, with Lansing police officers responding to the armed robbery shortly before 9 a.m. The Lansing Police Department and the FBI are actively investigating, per the same report.
A WGN-TV report described a 2023 armored-vehicle robbery at a different Chase Bank ATM in Lansing, at 16767 Torrence Avenue.
Tip Lines Open as Investigation Continues
Anyone with information has been asked to contact the FBI at 312-421-6700 or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. Information can also be submitted directly to the Lansing Police Department at 708-895-7150, the station's report notes.
This is not the first time a Brink's worker has been targeted at that stretch of Lansing. In August 2023, three male suspects robbed a Brink's truck at the Chase Bank at 16767 Torrence Avenue, and police pursued a black Nissan toward Chicago afterward, according to the Arlington Cardinal.
Part of a Broader Pattern of Armored-Car Robberies
Chicago-area armored-car robberies more than tripled in 2023 compared with the year before, FBI officials reported, and the total amount of money lost by area banking institutions jumped from $3 million to $5 million, according to ABC7 Chicago. Regular bank robberies held steady that year, the station reported, while only armored-car attacks saw the sharp spike, and the FBI said there had been no such robberies in the Chicago area so far in 2024 after the surge.
More recently, the FBI has been searching for two armed men who robbed an ATM technician outside a Bedford Park bank this month, with the technician not injured, according to CWB Chicago. In a separately reported incident, armed men confronted a Brink's armored car courier near ATMs at a PNC Bank in Cicero, escaping with the courier's firearm and an estimated $100,000 in cash, per a preliminary report cited by the outlet. Whether those cases are connected to each other remains unclear.
Federal prosecutors have previously tied a series of heists and attempted heists, including one in Lansing, to a broader conspiracy charged against ten defendants, with total losses of at least $3.8 million alleged in an indictment, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. No arrests have been reported in connection with Tuesday's robbery, and the identities of the suspects have not been released.
