At 7:22 a.m., another alarm rang at GardaWorld’s warehouse and a police car responded about 45 minutes later; the LAPD log shows it was considered a “valid alarm.” Finally, an alarm rang at 3:51 p.m. and a police car arrived around 4 p.m. in response. This was deemed a false alarm, according to the log, the details of which were first reported by TMZ.

According to Aria Kozak, chief executive of L.A.-based security services company Elite Interactive Solutions, the false alarms triggered before the heist could have been the result of criminals testing the security apparatus at the building.

“In that particular case, the false alarms could just be a little window into the criminal activity,” he said. “They are very capable and smart and they will look for the soft or weak spot.”

Law enforcement agencies have remained extraordinarily tight-lipped about the investigation of the incident. LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz declined to discuss the timeline of the crime, explaining that the probe was being handled by the FBI. An FBI spokeswoman said she could not disclose when the agency responded to the heist and declined to provide details of the inquiry.

The burgled GardaWorld facility, hemmed in by active train tracks and the mobile home park on two sides, is situated in a scruffy section of Sylmar where locals have said that street crime is a scourge. And neighbors have said that strange things occurred in the area over the weekend.

A park resident has said that she heard a strange mechanical sound coming from the GardaWorld property over Easter weekend. Her home offers a view of a portion of the warehouse where thieves also breached the side of the building. A KABC-TV News video aired April 3 showed a large cut on the side of the structure that was covered by a piece of plywood. And the owner of a nearby convenience store said its Wi-Fi was down much of Easter and mobile phone calls failed, too. It’s unclear whether that was connected to the heist, but Wi-Fi jammers have become a common tool of theft gangs because they knock out many security cameras.

Given the amount of money stored at the Roxford Street facility, such anomalous activity should have been detected by GardaWorld or an alarm service provider, according to security industry experts.

Security consultant Jim McGuffey, who previously held senior positions at Brink’s and Loomis, called the heist “a very professional job.” Nonetheless, he said, “there is no way this should have happened.”

“A well-protected facility that houses that kind of money ... normally in those facilities they have two separate alarm systems, they have sensors throughout the facility, cameras on the inside and outside,” he said. “No matter how you penetrate the building, a sensor detects that activity and sends an alert. That’s why it was such a shock.”

Zwirn added that such a property would typically include an alarm system that would be triggered by the presence of wireless signal jamming.

“While these perpetrators were sophisticated ... based on what we know, this should been a detectable event,” he said. “The question is why no one responded to what should have been a detectable event.”

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