The man who casually walked off with an 86-pound bucket of gold flakes was caught in his native Ecuador yesterday. And so ends the saga of one of the luckiest, most brazen thefts to capture our collective imagination in some time.
Julio Nivelo was arrested by federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations and The National Police of Ecuador yesterday morning, reports NBC 4 New York, which cites law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
Since Nivelo nabbed the $1.6 million in gold flakes in September, the police have been on his tail from his home in West New York, New Jersey, to Orlando, then Los Angeles and finally Ecuador. The arrest reportedly went smoothly:
He was arrested without incident after he sent the NYPD on a months-long search across the globe. It wasn’t known when he would be extradited to New York to face charges. Police say they have recovered some of the money.
Before he was captured, we learned that Nivelo was also supposedly a truck cargo-stealing mastermind. He had apparently ripped off many other trucks before he finally hit the golden jackpot in September.
Damn.