Three almost brilliant bank robbers are now facing the music for a February 2012 heist at a Queens check cashing joint. Prosecutors say Akeem Monsalvatge, Derrick Dunkley and Edward Byam, who are black, donned white masks from a special-effects company to commit the $200,000 crime. But what led the authorities to them was the glowing testimonial to the mask company, "I’m sending this message to say I’m extremely pleased by CFX work on the mask. The realism of the mask is unbelievable."
The Post reports, "The perps spent two painstaking months plotting their $200,000 stickup...and theorized that switching races would help them avoid detection, authorities said." The defendants were apparently inspired by the film, The Town, and the prosecution wants to show clips from that film, with prosecutor Maria Cruz-Melendez explaining, "They wore lifelike, custom-made, Hollywood-style special-effects masks that made them look like a team of white men." And there's a photo of Monsalvatge wearing a t-shirt with a masked robber from the movie.
The robbers, who were also posing at NYPD officers, had frightened the check cashing employee into giving up the money when they showed her a photograph of her home, indicating they knew where she lived. After taking the cash, they left the photograph at the scene—and the police traced the picture to a Walgreens where the photo was developed with Byam's telephone number on the receipt.
