The June 26, 1990, armed robbery of an Armored Motor Services of America (AMSA) armored truck in Henrietta, New York, was, at the time, the largest on-the-road armored car robbery in United States history. The investigation into the theft concluded it was an inside job.

The two company guards who were bound and gagged during the heist were given polygraph tests. One passed, but the other, twenty-six-year-old Albert Ranieri, failed.

Albert Ranieri

At 6:45 a.m., AMSA assigned Ranieri and another guard, Janet Brown, to deliver nearly $11 million in unmarked cash to the Federal Reserve Bank in Buffalo, seventy miles away.

Between 7:00-7:10, the guards stopped at the Bi-Rite Market, a small delicatessen/ convenience store, from which they frequently purchased snacks for their road trips. Such stops were not recommended but were not prohibited by the company.

The Bi-Rite Market

As Ranieri, the driver, waited in the truck, Janet entered the store to purchase some snacks. When she returned, she was greeted by a hooded gunman pointing a gun at her as she entered the vehicle. The man ordered her to the floor, where he bound her hands and feet with plastic handcuffs and blindfolded her with duct tape. Janet then heard him ordering her partner to drive; she believed she heard a car following behind them.

Approximately two minutes later, Janet heard the gunman ordering Ranieri to turn. She could then feel the truck’s speed slowing and the road getting bumpier. After several more orders to turn were barked out by the gunman, the truck came to a stop.

Janet then heard Ranieri being ordered to crawl through the window between the truck’s front and back. He was then bound, gagged, and placed on top of her.

Janet then heard what sounded like multiple people transporting the money out of the armored truck into another vehicle; little dialogue was exchanged between the robbers.  After several minutes, she heard a vehicle being driven away.

After roughly another fifteen minutes, Janet freed her hands from the plastic cuffs. Unable to free Ranieri from his restraints, she drove the truck to company headquarters and reported the robbery, arriving at approximately 7:40, roughly half-an-after the armed theft began.

Ranieri had driven to a forest one-and-a-half miles from the deli. The robbers had done their homework as the locale was about seventy-five to one-hundred yards off the road from which a small hill blocked its view from the main road. The area was well-suited for the money transfer and car switch, and the thieves had made the terrain more suitable by having cut several tree branches to allow the large truck to fit through the narrow path.

Officers Search The Terrain Where The Money Was Transported

Prior to the armored truck’s detour off the beaten path, motorists had seen it being followed closely by a gray Chevrolet van.

The following day, a blue van was found five miles away with nearly $13,000 in small bills laying scattered inside. The switch vehicle had recently been stolen from Ontario County, bordering Henrietta’s Monroe County to the south. The robbers had used bolt cutters to break a lock on the van’s back door.

The Stolen Van Is Found

The rest of the money from the heist, totaling approximately $10.8 million, was gone. The stolen loot consisted of $1 million in hundred-dollar bills, $8 million in twenties, and nearly $1.8 million in smaller denominations.

The money transported by AMSA was stored in pallets similar to those in the picture. The robbers are believed to have transferred the nearly $11 million of crated cash weighing between 1,500-1,700 pounds between the vehicles with brisk efficiency, taking only between five and ten minutes.

A Heavy Load

The investigation into the Henrietta Heist produced a number of peculiar findings.

Albert Ranieri said that after Janet Brown entered the deli, two gunmen wearing tan clothes nearly identical to those worn by AMSA employees emerged from a gray van parked near where he had parked. One of them immediately pointed a gun through a conveniently broken porthole in the truck while another used a key to open the side door.

To investigators, these coincidences suggested the robbery was an inside job.  Janet Brown was cleared of any involvement, but Ranieri became a focus of attention after failing a polygraph test.

In April 1991, ten months after the robbery, investigators were granted a warrant to search Ranieri’s Parma home, twenty miles northwest of Henrietta. They seized his work uniforms, financial records, insurance papers, a bicycle, and a Halloween mask. The items were later returned after they could not be linked to the robbery.

In July 1992, Ranieri was again arrested and his residence was again searched after an informant confessed his involvement in the robbery and implicated Ranieri.  When this search also yielded no trace of the stolen money, Ranieri was again released after it was determined the informant was in jail at the time of the robbery.

Ranieri Is Suspected

Ranieri’s father, Albert Sr., had also been arrested after being implicated by the informant. He lived near where the money was transported into the getaway van, but he too was released after a raid on his home failed to find anything relating to the robbery.

Albert Ranieri, Sr.

Ranieri Jr., however, was ultimately linked to the robbery. During an undercover drug investigation in 2000, he and his former defense attorney, Tony Leonardo, went to a hotel room to purchase cocaine, unaware that the room was bugged and that the seller was undercover FBI informant Anthony Delmonti.  Ranieri purchased $100,000 worth of crack with money believed to have been pilfered from the heist. He also boasted he had burned nearly $100,000 of the stolen money in a barbecue pit because he believed it could be traced to him.

Ranieri was arrested and charged with his participation in the robbery. This time, he was not released and was soon in even more hot water.

Ranieri Walks Into A Trap

On May 5, 2000, several months before Ranieri and Leonardo were busted, forty-four-year-old Club Titanic Nightclub owner Tony Vaccaro was shot to death while driving. He was found to have aided the pair in laundering the stolen money from the robbery.

An investigation found evidence tying Ranieri and Leonardo to the killing. Vaccaro was believed to have been murdered because his partners-in-crime thought he was hiding some of the pilfered loot from them.

Tony Vaccaro

Leonardo pled guilty to drug and conspiracy to commit murder charges. He was granted parole in 2013.

Tony Leonardo

Ranieri also pled guilty to the murder of Tony Vaccaro and to a federal racketeering charge of conspiracy in relation to the Henrietta Heist.  Under the terms of a plea deal, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison and fined $250,000 in December 2002.

In 2020, Ranieri was denied a request for a compassionate release to care for his ailing mother.

Ranieri Convicted

Ranieri, now fifty-nine-years-old, was released from prison on April 12, 2024, after serving over twenty years.

Ranieri Released

Only $87,000 of the $10.8 million of the Henrietta Heist money has been recovered. Ranieri claims he invested over $650,000 of the money in stocks, a limousine business, and drugs, including cocaine smuggled from California. He said he also gave $10,000 to a man to apply for a job with Armored Motor Services of America in a failed effort to carry out another heist.

Ranieri refused to identify his accomplices in the Henrietta Heist.

Ranieri Has Not Named His Cohorts

May still suspect Albert Ranieri, Sr. of some sort of involvement in the Henrietta Heist. Like his son, his lawyer was the now disbarred and disgraced Tony Leonardo.

Was Daddy Involved?

In the days preceding the Henrietta Heist, authorities say they received several reports of suspicious activity of three men in and around the area whom they believe were involved in the robbery. Composites were created of them in 1992.

The suspect on the left was seen the day before the robbery lurking near the site where the armored truck was emptied. He appeared to be in his mid-to-late forties, five-feet-eight-inches tall, and weighing around one-hundred-eighty pounds.

The man in the middle was believed in his mid-thirties, five-feet-ten to six-feet tall with dark hair and a moustache. He was seen driving the gray van parked next to the truck at the convenience store.

The suspect on the right was seen earlier driving the gray van. He is believed to be of Puerto Rican or Italian descent, in his mid-thirties to mid-forties, with dark hair and a moustache.

Although the  statute of limitations on the robbery has run out, investigators would still like to identify these men.

Unidentified Accomplices

In May 1989, just over a year before the Henrietta Heist, $2.9 million was stolen from another AMSA truck in East Syracuse, New York.

Two men pistol-whipped two guards, commandeered the vehicle, and drove it through a garage door. They were found to have been aided by a third man, an AMSA security guard. All were apprehended and convicted for taking part in the robbery.

An Earlier AMSA Robbery

SOURCES:

• Arizona Daily Sun
• Democrat and Chronicle Rochester, New York
• Los Angeles Times
• New York Times
• USA Today
• Tulsa World
• Washington Post