SAN RAMON — They held hands and kissed as they traversed a local Target, ordered a couple drinks at the Starbucks counter, then left the area in a blue BMW X3 almost as quickly as they’d arrived, authorities say.
To anyone who saw them on the afternoon of July 19, Diego Ananias Arellano Díaz and his 24-year-old girlfriend would have easily blended in with the crowd of shoppers. But during the 12-minute visit, Arellano Díaz allegedly made a fateful decision: He’d be back with two cohorts, equipped with an improvised gas bomb and they were going to blow the front off that store.
At around 2 a.m. on July 20, that’s exactly what happened. Three men — donning masks, a skeleton costume and blue coveralls — exited the same BMW that was seen there hours earlier, with a getaway driver staying behind. They pried a hole in an ATM at the front of the Target, ran gas-filled tubes inside and lit a spark from several yards away, according to authorities.
The explosion blasted off the ATM, creating a hole the robbers allegedly used to steal $16,300 in cash. The damage to the store was estimated at $100,000 — and Target officials told police they lost about $200,000 in revenue while the store was closed to clean up the mess.
Over the next 10 days, police would track the robbers’ movements throughout the Bay Area, linking them not only to a Piedmont home burglary two days before the bombing, but to a large, sophisticated West Coast heist crew that has reaped millions. Their goal is cash, and they’ve shown a willingness to blow up, torch and break anything that stands in the way, according to federal prosecutors.
Over much of 2024, the group had hit locations from San Diego to Washington state. In late 2024, several crew members, including Arellano Díaz, were indicted on federal charges, though at the time Arellano Díaz was known as “John Doe 2” and hadn’t been apprehended.
Now, he and others had come to the Bay Area, rented a BMW in Hayward, and signed up to stay in an AirBnB on Monterey Avenue in Martinez as they plotted their next move, according to authorities.
Arellano Díaz, 31, was arrested because he allegedly sent a selfie of his face, next to a fake ID, to the owner of the BMW on a car rental app. Also known by the aliases Juan Turo, Fabio Cristian Hernández and Juan Ruiz Silvera, Arellano Díaz is a Chilean national who has been linked to violent crimes, including an assault in Los Angeles and a homicide in Chile, according to police. He’s also a suspect in at least 30 ATM burglaries across the West Coast, making him one of the most prolific members of the heist crew.
In nearly every single alleged heist, the modus operandi was the same, with the thieves scouting locations in advance, renting Airbnbs and vehicles, then putting their plan into action. They would typically spray-paint security cameras, then use power tools and blowtorches to access ATMs. They would often wear disguises, like posing as a construction crew, and bring with them cellphone jammers, cases of power tools, sledgehammers and crowbars, according to the criminal complaint.
Sometimes this required going through a wall to access a bank’s cash room, like last Sept. 18, when the group allegedly broke into the Diamond in the Ruff pet spa on East Orangeburg Avenue in Modesto, then cut a giant hole in the wall to access an ATM cash room in an adjacent Wells Fargo. That resulted in a $247,000 cash loss to the bank, the criminal complaint says.
Arellano Díaz’s alleged cohorts the day of the bombing haven’t been identified — and it’s still unclear how many there are. Three men participated in the bombing, as a getaway driver stayed in the BMW. Arellano Díaz, his 24-year-old girlfriend and another woman traveled to three Targets on July 19, stopping in San Ramon, Dublin and Albany, in an apparent scouting mission that ended just a few hours before the explosion, authorities allege.
On July 18, the BMW was seen at the scene of a residential burglary on Requa Place in Piedmont, where the suspects made off with a Rolex watch and other jewelry. It was a Piedmont detective who first realized the BMW had been rented by Arellano Díaz, though at the time police believed his real name was Turo. Eventually, a federal agent learned of the link and helped police connect the dots, authorities said.
Arellano Díaz was arrested on July 29, in Newport Beach, but came close to eluding capture once again. A surveillance team was staking out a Burbank rental where he and his girlfriend were staying, but the two took off early on the morning of July 28 in a Subaru, and never returned. Investigators put out an alert for the Subaru, and Newport Beach police pulled it over the following day, authorities said.
Inside the vehicle were diamond rings, foreign currency, hotel keys, counterfeit American cash, designer wallets and suspected burglary tools, authorities said. Arellano Díaz was arrested on the federal warrant, and his girlfriend was also taken into custody that day, according to court records.
Finally, on Aug. 21, a grand jury in the heist case handed down a new indictment, filing charges of bank robbery, arson and conspiracy to commit bank larceny, robbery, possession of stolen goods, interstate transportation of stolen goods and commercial arson.
The 11 defendants are Arellano Díaz, Alex Moyano Morales, Maité Belén Celis Silva, Erik Osorio Olvarez, Sergio Eduardo Aravena Maureira (aka Pablo Andrés Valdez Rodríguez), Rosa Francisco Bastias Serra, Camilo Andrew Guzmán Sepúlveda, Francisco Antonio Marín Ilabaca (aka Bassil Alejandro Dacosta Frías), Alvaro Adrián Lagos Mieries, Humberto Aníbal Jiménez Moreno, and Kevin Alexander Hidalgo Pacheco.