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Brinks heist priest plans book about his life

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Moloney said this week that he had not yet seen a copy of the book “On the Brinks,” written by Belfast-based former IRA member Sam Millar. In the book, Millar places himself at the center of a heist that netted a record $7.4 million. Millar claims that the robbery was as easy to pull off as robbing a “cheesebox” and says that the Limerick-born Moloney stashed a portion of the haul in Manhattan.
Millar and Moloney both served prison sentences for possessing stolen money but were never charged with actually carrying out the heist. And neither will be now because the statute of limitations in the case ran out in 1998.
Moloney continued to maintain his innocence this week, even though over $2 million was recovered by the FBI from a Manhattan apartment he was subletting six months after the robbery.
In his book, Millar describes heaving “mountains of money” into sacks. He also claims that the bulk of the haul, about $5.2 million, was subsequently stolen from the home of a lawyer by an unidentified cocaine addict.
The main focus of investigators, retired Rochester cop and then Brink’s security guard Tom O’Connor, was acquitted in his trial.
Moloney, a priest in the Vatican-linked Greek Melkite Church, served four years in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania and was released in late 1998. He said this week that the publication of Millar’s book was not a surprise though he had not yet obtained a copy.
“The contents have been communicated to me and I’m deeply disappointed to learn that there are a lot of fabrications in it,” Moloney said.
Moloney said that he understood the book made it clear that he had nothing to do with the actual robbery, but that it implicated him as a participant after the fact.
“Why Millar did not totally exonerate me is beyond moral depravity,” Moloney said.
However, he added that he bore no ill will against him.
“I let Millar use the apartment, but I never even heard of the Brinks robbery until I was arrested,” Moloney said. “I’ve nothing to hide. There’s not a shred of evidence that would tie me to the money. The case against me was circumstantial evidence and half-truths developed into lies.”
Moloney said that while he knew now that Millar was involved in the robbery he had doubts that the Belfast man was the mastermind behind it.
“But I was definitely not a participant, before or after the fact,” he said.
Moloney said he had been contacted by several publishers and writers with a view to the publication of a book about his life in Ireland and the U.S. and had been gathering papers and documents with a view to going ahead with the project.

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