By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, Nov 9 (Reuters) - An Ecuadorean man has agreed to plead guilty to a federal robbery charge for his role in the theft of roughly $100 million worth of jewelry from an armored truck five years ago in California, considered the largest such heist in US history.
Carlos Victor Mestanza Cercado, 32, an Ecuadorean national arrested two years ago in Panama during a layover on a flight from Guatemala to his home country, was one of seven men indicted on charges of robbing a Brink's
truck at a highway rest stop north of Los Angeles on July 11, 2022.
The armored vehicle was plundered while carrying 73 sacks of precious gems and fine jewelry from a major exhibition in the San Francisco Bay area to a storage facility hundreds of miles to the south ahead of another show scheduled in Pasadena.
Mestanza and his co-defendants, who had followed the jewelry shipment in multiple vehicles for 300 miles (480 km) while coordinating by cellphone, broke through the locks of the armored truck while it was parked at a rural Kern County rest stop and got away with 24 bags of treasure, authorities said.
The stolen collection of fine gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds and luxury watches were valued at approximately $100 million, marking the largest US jewelry heist on record, according to the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.
Mestanza signed an agreement last week to plead guilty to a single count of interference with commerce by robbery, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, in return for prosecutors dropping several other charges he faced, according to court documents filed on Monday.
He is expected to formally enter his guilty plea at a hearing set for November 19. The 22-page plea deal states he is likely to face immediate deportation once his sentence is served.
In addition to the jewelry heist, Mestanza admitted to taking part with his co-defendants in the highway robberies of electronics being shipped by several trucks in March 2022.
Three of Mestanza's co-defendants are scheduled for trial in March 2027 in federal court in Los Angeles, while two others remain at large and a seventh accused member of their gang has been deported, according to the Los Angeles City News Service.
It was not clear from court documents in the case whether any of the stolen jewelry from the Brink's heist was ever recovered.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
