Three men in their 20s from Texas pleaded guilty Tuesday and were sentenced to 60 days in jail for a conspiracy to break into vehicles across Southern California, part of what authorities described as a nationwide “bank jugging” trend.
Maurice James, 25, Samuel Marcus Polite, 21, and Javion Marcell Matthews, 23, pleaded guilty to burglary and conspiracy to commit a crime, both felonies. They were placed on two years of formal probation.
Investigators said “bank jugging” involves suspects watching bank customers leave with cash and then breaking into their vehicles at their next stop to steal the money.
According to the criminal complaint, they rented a 2025 Ford Expedition from Hertz and drove from Texas to Southern California on July 2, 2025. The three replaced the license plate on the SUV.
The three then “cased multiple victims for potential vehicle burglaries by driving through five separate shopping plazas in Cypress, Buena Park, Los Alamitos and Seal Beach that contained banks with the plazas,” according to the complaint.
The three followed a man as he exited a Wells Fargo branch in Seal Beach carrying a bank bag. The three then broke into the victim’s Honda Accord and grabbed the bank bag, according to the complaint.
The trio then drove to a Chase branch in Cerritos and cased it for more victims, according to the complaint.
Irvine police on July 2 investigating two vehicle break-ins spotted a suspected getaway car in a surveillance video that was a Ford Expedition and had a stolen license plate out of Irvine, police said.
Police tracked down the suspect vehicle with the stolen license plate and conducted surveillance on the suspects outside Irvine, police said.
Irvine detectives stopped the Ford Expedition after the Seal Beach heist and found the stolen banker’s bag, a fake license plate, burglary tools, a ski mask and cash, police said.
Lol, yeah, you don’t want to be hood and try to do something in Irvine. Those cops have nothing to do. Weird that it’s always people from Texas.