In September, it began its boldest move yet - an ongoing hostile bid to buy G4S, the world’s largest private security firm. In just 15 years, its annual revenue increased from less than $200 million to $2.7 billion. The Canada-based parent company posts consistently strong operating margins that have allowed it to attract investors and grow at a breakneck pace. Other divisions of the company provide college campus security and carry out sensitive defense contracts, including protecting the U.S. Learn more about donatingĪs Garda has become a global private-security powerhouse, the company has taken on important and wide-ranging roles far beyond the U.S. Help us keep bringing stories like this to you. Louis bank did not respond to interview requests. The Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors declined to comment, and the St. Louis was among the banks that received inaccurate reports because money was missing, according to Bolton, who managed Garda’s St. The company also stores money for the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. It is not clear which of those banks currently use Garda’s vaults, whether any knew about issues in Garda’s vaults or whether any money is missing today. But the Times determined it has held money for at least five of the nation’s 10 largest banks: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank and TD Bank. When the Times sent the company a detailed summary of its reporting, Garda did not respond. “Inventory reconciliation is normal course of business for any cash vault operation.” “Any discrepancies detected are immediately investigated, reported and resolved,” the statement continued. It said it has “industry-leading controls in place to monitor the constant movement of our clients’ money.” The company added that the banks’ assets are never at risk because the money is insured.
In a statement to the Times last month, the company said it handles about $8 billion a day for 8,000 clients at more than 75 vaults.
Garda did not agree to interview requests for this story.
“I don’t know how they have not gotten caught,” he added. He said Garda terminated him in 2019 after he complained about safety problems. “They would pretty much bamboozle the auditors, when in fact they have no clue where the money is,” said Newell, who ran the Stratford branch. But they were unknowingly looking at another bank’s money, he said. Louis repeatedly stalled bank auditors in a conference room while workers scrambled to move boxes of quarters and dimes - each containing hundreds of dollars - from one bank’s account to another, according to Jammie Bolton, the branch’s manager at the time.Īuditors were then shown the amount they expected.
The coin vault how to#
In 2015, emails show that Garda employees discussed how to keep TD Bank from learning that a single branch couldn’t find $924,000 of the bank’s coins. But six former Garda employees confirmed to the Times that Garda’s vaults were missing money in later years. They set out to tally how much was missing and estimated roughly $9 million, according to the document. High-level Garda executives became aware of the discrepancies as early as 2014, a company document obtained by the Times shows. Its workers and unsuspecting motorists suffered the consequences. But as cash went missing, some branches kept reporting that the money was there, the Times found.
Garda sends banks a daily accounting of their balance in each vault. Some were rife with unsolved thefts and lacked basic safeguards like high-quality security cameras. It took just eight years for Garda to become the industry leader, holding money for some of the largest banks in the world.īehind that spectacular growth is an untold story of deception.Ī Tampa Bay Times investigation has found that Garda lost track of millions of dollars inside its vaults, then concealed the missing money from the banks that were its clients.Ĭourt records and interviews depict some of the vaults as chaotic places where employees routinely ignored protocol and lost money. The shortage was so large, other New England branches had been told to send money as well.Īs Garda’s armored trucks became ubiquitous on American roads, the international security contractor also moved into the little-known but growing business of storing money for U.S. He sent it all.Ī few days later, Newell said, he learned it hadn’t been enough. It held about $20,000 in coins belonging to Bank of America and two other banks, Newell said in an interview. Newell’s Stratford, Conn., branch was relatively small. Brian Newell had been a manager at one of GardaWorld’s armored truck branches for about a year when a high-ranking supervisor called in 2018 with a bizarre order: Load all the coins stored at his branch in Connecticut onto a truck bound for Massachusetts.Īuditors from Bank of America were coming to Garda’s Dedham, Mass., branch to count money that Garda was being paid to protect.
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