The story of robbery mastermind Allen Pace III and the Dunbar Armored facility robbery is getting the film treatment, Shadow and Act has learned.
Caleeb Pinkett, producer of Charm City Kings and brother of actress/producer Jada Pinkett Smith, and production company Rebel Maverick, are working on bringing the story of a 1997 robbery at Los Angeles’ Dunbar Armored facility to the big screen. The film will be based on the Medium article “The Dunbar Heist,” by Alyssa Keli Rose. Pinkett will produce with clarence Hammond and Dougie Cash along with Rebel Maverick’s Nastassja Kayln, Matt Nicholas, and Jane Kim. Norman Towns will executive produce. Leon Langford will write the screenplay with Kayln and Nicholas.
Pinkett and the producers said in a statement that they chose to adapt this story because of “our love for heists and also, most importantly, seeing someone finally come out on top after always being at the bottom of the barrel. That was and is Allen Pace III.”
The real-life heist involved fired Dunbar employee Allen Pace and five his friends, who stole over $18 million in less than 30 minutes. The men were able to evade police for four years before heist member Eugene Lamar Hill, gave a middleman some of his money in an effort to buy property for Pace’s new company, Extreme Entertainment, which was meant to function as a front for their stolen cash. However, Hill forgot to remove the cash straps from the stacks of money, accidentally revealing evidence of the robbery.
Pace and his friends, Hill, Erik Damon Boyd, Terry Wayne Brown, Freddie Lynn McCrary Jr. and Thomas Lee Johnson, were convicted in 2001. While the others received seven-and-a-half to 11-year sentences, Pace received a sentence of 24 years. The heist has gone down in America history as the country’s biggest cash robbery, and only $5 million of the stolen $18.9 million was ever recovered.
Pinkett is a producer on several Westbrook productions, including Apple’s Hala, Netflix (then-YouTube)’s Cobra Kai, and the upcoming Warner Bros. pic, King Richard.
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Photo: Getty Images / Creative Commons
