The Man Inside: An armored-car guard, his mother & a robbery conspiracy yielding nearly a million dollars

On May 22, 2008, a scheduled Dunbar Armored delivery brought Erick Wilson to downtown Washington, D.C. He was there to move cash securely from one place to another—a routine assignment built around procedures, timing and trust. Then came the gunpoint robbery.

Approximately $210,000 vanished. Wilson appeared to be the employee unlucky enough to stand between the thieves and their payday. But the encounter had a second story, hidden beneath the first.

The guard was part of the crew.

Wilson’s delivery had supplied the opportunity. His apparent surprise supplied the cover. What looked like a sudden attack was a coordinated theft, with an insider playing the victim.

It was the opening act of a conspiracy that would stretch across three years and six robberies. Before it ended, the operation would involve stolen guns, disposable phones, concealed money and a mother helping support her son’s criminal enterprise.

The Perfect Employee to Rob

An armored vehicle is a moving promise: the money inside will reach its destination.

Steel, firearms and security procedures help keep that promise. So do the employees who know the routes and handle the deliveries. Those workers occupy the most sensitive position in the operation. They understand the routine because they are responsible for carrying it out.

Wilson understood it from the inside.

For the Washington robbery, the crew did not have to discover a delivery through patient surveillance or chance upon an exposed shipment. Wilson was making the scheduled delivery himself.

The location gave the operation an audacity that would become part of its appeal as a crime story. This was downtown Washington, an address among offices and ordinary business activity. The money was taken in a place where people expected another workday to proceed normally.

Wilson’s participation turned that expectation into an advantage.

He occupied the role investigators would naturally examine as a victim: the guard confronted during a cash delivery. His performance helped give the theft the appearance of an outside attack.

The robbery produced approximately $210,000.

The Next Five

Between April 2009 and April 2011, the operation expanded into Maryland. Four more robberies took place in Silver Spring. Another occurred in Ellicott City. Dunbar employees were confronted at gunpoint, and the robbers took both cash and employee handguns.

For the guards facing those weapons, the danger was real.

That fact cuts through the cleverness of the first robbery’s deception. An inside job can sound almost bloodless when reduced to its mechanics: a schedule, a cooperative employee, a convincing cover story. But this conspiracy involved armed confrontations with workers whose jobs placed them beside the money.

Every additional robbery created another encounter in which someone could be shot.

The stolen handguns added to the operation’s arsenal and its exposure. The crew was accumulating more than proceeds. It was accumulating weapons, participants and connections that investigators could eventually follow.

The total stolen across the six robberies reached approximately $765,000.

Mother and Son

Among the people supporting the operation was Regina McCullom, also known as Regina Wilson—she was Erick Wilson’s mother.

Her involvement gave the case a twist that needed little embroidery. While her son helped compromise the armored-delivery operation, McCullom helped with the arrangements surrounding the robberies: disposable phones, vehicles, drivers and hotel rooms.

The work was practical. A robbery crew needed ways to communicate, move around and stay somewhere. Those ordinary necessities became parts of a criminal operation.

The family relationship made the arrangement particularly striking. The person helping Wilson was someone connected to him long before Dunbar, long before the downtown delivery, long before the first stolen dollar.

McCullom’s role extended beyond being a relative who knew the wrong people. She participated in the conspiracy and later pleaded guilty to conspiring to rob Dunbar armored vehicles and to firearm-related charges.

Mother and son were bound together in the federal case.

After the Getaway

A successful escape leaves another problem: what happens to the money and weapons afterward?

The crew used storage units. In Columbia, Maryland, a unit became a hiding place for stolen cash, an M16 rifle, parts for the weapon and a handgun used in some of the robberies. Another unit in Aston, Pennsylvania, held robbery proceeds and other items.

Money was also buried near the intersection of Eldorado Avenue and Carleview Road in Baltimore.

These were the less visible scenes of the conspiracy. The robbery itself was the moment of confrontation. Afterward came the business of concealment: finding places to hold the proceeds and keeping firearms away from the scenes where they had been used.

The operation reached beyond armored vehicles into rented spaces, temporary accommodations and transportation arrangements—those connections helped define the scope of the case. Six robberies had become a network of people, places and property.

The Case Comes Together

The investigation crossed jurisdictional lines, involving the FBI, Montgomery County Police, Howard County Police and prosecutors.

By December 2011, a superseding federal indictment described the wider conspiracy and sought forfeiture of $765,000.

Wilson, David Marquise Howard and McCullom faced robbery and firearm charges. Gloria Jeanette Martino and Matthew Mace faced accessory-related charges; Mace also faced a machine-gun possession charge.

The government’s account brought the separate pieces together: the staged Washington robbery, the Maryland attacks, the support arrangements and the concealed proceeds.

The first robbery could no longer be understood as an isolated encounter between a guard and armed strangers.

Wilson belonged on both sides of the story.

Thirty-Two Years and One Day

Wilson and Howard each received sentences of 32 years and one day in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

The money had been counted in hundreds of thousands. Their punishment would be measured in decades.

The case’s defining deception remained the simplest part of it: a man entrusted to protect a delivery helped arrange its theft, then appeared to suffer the robbery alongside his employer.

On May 22, 2008, Wilson’s uniform identified him as the person responsible for safeguarding the cash.

It also concealed the person helping take it.