Arnold Boon Gets 7.5 Years for 7-Eleven ATM Heist

Arnold Boon, 33, of Washington, D.C., is headed to federal prison for 7½ years after a violent smash-and-grab heist that ripped through a Northwest 7-Eleven at 1:30 a.m. on January 19, 2018. Boon and at least two masked accomplices rammed a stolen Ford pickup through the storefront in the 200 block of Cedar Street NW, plowed into the interior, and tore an ATM from the wall containing more than $130,000 in cash.

Surveillance footage captured the chaos: one unidentified man driving the truck, while two others stormed inside. One of them, later confirmed as Boon through DNA evidence, struggled to hoist the heavy machine into the truck’s bed. In the frenzy, a gold watch slid from his wrist and hit the floor—left behind, but not forgotten. That piece of jewelry became a critical piece of evidence, linking Boon directly to the scene.

The store clerk and at least one customer were trapped inside during the violent intrusion. For several tense minutes, the suspects wrestled with the ATM before finally loading it onto the truck. Boon climbed into the bed with the stolen machine while the others took the cab. They vanished into the night—leaving behind shattered glass, terror, and a trail of forensic breadcrumbs.

The stolen pickup was found abandoned and idling just blocks away, empty and stripped of both suspects and the ATM. The next morning, police recovered the emptied machine dumped in a wooded area across D.C.—every dollar gone. But the gold watch, retrieved from the crime scene, held Boon’s DNA. On March 17, 2018, authorities arrested him at his residence, where a loaded semi-automatic pistol was pulled from a dresser drawer in his bedroom.

Boon, already barred from possessing firearms due to prior assault convictions, pleaded guilty on April 22, 2019, to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and one count of interference with interstate commerce by robbery. Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down the 7½-year sentence, along with three years of supervised release and a restitution order exceeding $150,000—to cover both the stolen cash and structural damage to the building.

The case was led by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Violent Crime Safe Streets Task Force, a joint operation with MPD and U.S. Capitol Police. U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu, FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew J. DeSarno, and MPD Chief Peter Newsham praised the investigators and prosecutors, including Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven B. Wasserman and Ethan Carroll, and Paralegal Specialist Rommel Pachoca, whose work sealed Boon’s fate. The message is clear: smash, steal, run—but the evidence rarely does.