Rolex
Recommended Reading The Time Bandits Of Southern California
Burners, baseball players, and watches thrown from moving vehicles – experience the fall of a watch-obsessed SoCal smash-and-grab robbery ring.
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I can't help it, I love a good heist story. But while I may leave Heat playing on a spare monitor in my office, actual heists do happen, and this story from GQ follows a Southern California operation that specialized in smash-and-grab jobs for luxury watches. It's a long and fascinating read that follows both the steady pattern of robberies, the slow reveal of those involved, and a special agent hell-bent on putting all the pieces together.
From $600,000 worth of watches tossed out of a moving vehicle on the 405 to stolen cars, gang ties, and a fence nicknamed "The Russian," if you live in Southern California and love watches, you likely know the stores that these men targeted in a spree of robberies that often lasted less than two minutes. This is a story with all of the makings of a great heist movie (the nicknames alone) and instead of cash or art, the baddies wanted watches.
Illustration: Johnny Dombrowski for GQ
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