Thieves stole 2 million dimes from a tractor-trailer in a Walmart parking lot, police say

Police are looking for a group of thieves they say stole two million dimes from a tractor-trailer in Philadelphia early Thursday morning, KOAT reported.

"Overnight, a carrier parked his tractor-trailer [with $750,000 worth of dimes inside]," Philadelphia Police Department Captain John Ryan told reporters.

"Common practice with drivers to pick up loads. He was going to Florida ... They park the truck overnight to get on the road in the morning."

In this case, the tractor trailer was stuffed with dimes from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. It was parked in the Walmart parking lot of Philadelphia Mills, a shopping center in the northeastern part of the city.

The driver, who lives nearby, parked the coin-filled trailer in the lot and went home to get some sleep before a long drive to a mint in Miami, CBS News reported.

At some point while the tractor-trailer was unattended, thieves broke into it with a bolt cutter and got away with about $200,000 in dimes, scattering many coins across the parking lot as they did so.

It remains unclear if the driver will be charged, the outlet also said.

The weight of such a haul is substantial. A single dime weighs about 2.268 grams or about .08 ounces. Two million dimes weigh about 10,000 pounds. That's roughly the weight equivalent of an African elephant.

Police say the thieves, ten or so men in black clothing and grey hoodies, made off with the mammoth haul in two vehicles. One was a white, Chrysler 300. The other was described as a "dark pickup truck," according to the New York Times.

An initial estimate of the haul's value was "up to $100,000," as WGAL reported. Once the counting was complete, authorities revised the estimate. They now say the total stolen is closer to 2 million ten-cent coins worth $200,000.

News helicopters captured the scene from overhead. The parking lot was strewn with twinkling coins. Officials used shovels to scoop the dimes off the parking lot and into buckets.

"I’ve never seen anything like this," officer Miguel Torres, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department told the New York Times.

"That’s the weird part about this," Torres also said. "How do they expect to use it?"

Torres also offered some possibly tongue-in-cheek advice, "If for some reason you have a lot of dimes at home, this is probably not the time to cash them in."

Watch WPVI's coverage of the curious heist below.