It was a most brazen crime: Around 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 7, two men wearing white Hazmat-type get-ups walked into Haven Gastropub in Old Towne Orange, placed the ATM unit on a dolly and wheeled it out.
By the time employees realized what had happened–that the joint had been robbed in plain sight–the men and the machine were gone.
But not, as it turns out, for very long.
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First, Corona Police officers found the ATM–busted open and with all the money gone– in a commercial area
near the 91 freeway and Green River Road. But evidence left behind led Orange Police investigators to a home in Orange.
There, on Dec. 9, resident Paul Rivera and Scott Skallerud, both 41, were arrested. The day before, 42-year-old Scott Larson had been picked up on unrelated charges and held at Orange County Jail. He was later tied to the ATM heist as well.
Police believe one man served as a lookout while the pair in white jumpsuits wheeled out the ATM.
The Orange County Register reports that Skallerud already pleaded not guilty to felony grand theft, second-degree
burglary and false personation charges at his arraignment.
A Jan. 7 arraignment date has been set for Larson, who was popped for felony second-degree burglary and grand theft, and Rivera, who is up on felony second-degree burglary.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.