These Soshanguve cash-in-transit robbers saw their brazen efforts go up in smoke in a heist that went horribly wrong.
Watch: Soshanguve cash heist goes up in smoke
Details around the incident were still very sketchy at the time this article was published.
However, according to reports, a G4S security guard was allegedly accosted by two armed robbers at a BP petrol station in Soshanguve, Limpopo, and the entire encounter was captured on CCTV.
In the clip, which you can watch below, a lone cash-in-transit guard was seen pushing a sealed cash box toward a G4S armoured truck, but before he could take another step, two unidentified men approached him with assault rifles drawn.
The guard immediately retreated from the cash box, and with his hands raised, he cautiously stepped away and allowed the robbers to casually walk off with the loaded cash box.
One of the robbers pushed the guard to the ground while his mate enthusiastically opened the trunk of their white getaway vehicle to load their stolen gains.
However, in their haste, the robbers jumped into the getaway vehicle without ensuring that the trunk was adequately shut. When one of the robbers returned to the trunk of the vehicle to attempt to close it again, a plume of red powder permeated from the cash box.
The powder is an intelligent banknote neutralisation system (IBNS) used by financial security companies to render cash notes stolen from heists unusable. Once triggered, the powder dyes the stolen money in a specific colour and makes it easily identifiable as cash stolen in a robbery.
In this case, the robbers had gone through the trouble of pulling off a brazen daytime heist only to escape with a box stuffed with unusable currency.
Here is the video clip of the viral Soshanguve cash-in-transit heist: