A California man was arrested after he was allegedly captured on surveillance footage using explosives in unsuccessful attempts to steal cash from two ATMs.
Son Nguyen, 44, of San Diego, was arrested Friday and charged with two counts of damaging property.
Nguyen allegedly drove up to an ATM outside California Coast Credit Union on Governor Drive in San Diego around 3:30 a.m. on June 8, when he exited his car and was seen on surveillance video taking a five-gallon blue plastic container with a white spout to the front of the ATM and inserting a black polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic hose into the machine just before an explosion inside the device, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.
But despite attempting to pull money out of the ATM, Nguyen left without any cash from the machine.
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San Diego Police responded to an alarm at the credit union and found a white PVC pipe connected to a black PVC pipe with two batteries taped to it. They also located pieces of what appeared to be a blue balloon around the ATM and another plastic pipe.
A few weeks later, at around 2 a.m. on June 28, Nguyen reportedly drove up to another ATM in Rancho Bernardo outside a First Citizens Bank branch in San Diego and repeated the same steps.
After electrical components caught fire and smoke began coming out of the ATM, Nguyen returned to the machine and attempted to pull cash from it but was unsuccessful.
Investigators used surveillance footage to track Nguyen and his car. The investigators then served a search warrant at his home and found gas, black powder, potassium nitrate sulfur, explosive pre-cursor chemicals, a paper that explains how to make black powder and a firearm inside the home, as well as other equipment and clothing items consistent with those used during the attempts to steal from the ATMs.
“Fortunately, neither of these incidents resulted in injury or successful theft of cash,” U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said in a statement. “With the discovery of chemicals and equipment in the search today, future attempts were also thwarted.”
