A Scuba Bandit Has Pulled Off A Daring $20K Disney Springs Splash-and-Dash Heist

Disney Springs is among the safest, most surveilled, and most policed entertainment zones in Florida, one you’re unlikely to see covered in a true-crime write-up. On most nights, tourists jam into its myriad shops, restaurants, and bars, while sheriff’s deputies and Disney security guards patrol the streets and pathways nearby, and it is one of the last places you’d ever think you would hear a “Florida Man” headline based around. Yet, in the early hours of September 15th, after the partygoers had left and the storefronts darkened, something odd happened at Paddlefish, the large seafood restaurant shaped like a riverboat docked in the middle of the complex. Employees were tidying up, counting the day’s takings in the manager’s office, when they realized they weren’t alone.

A man stood before them, head-to-toe in tight-fitting dark clothing. The employees later reported to deputies they could see goggles, gloves, and what looked like a diving hood. Before the employees realized what was going on, the man had spray-painted over the security cameras, ordered them to the corner, and demanded they close their eyes. Moments later, the man cracked open the safe and spilled out stacks of cash. Employees said the whole thing was over in less than two minutes, just enough time for them to free themselves and call 911. The man had cleared, and deputies arrived to search the area around the restaurant.

It was odd enough that someone just walked into the restaurant, tied up employees, and cleaned out the safe. What the deputies discovered was stranger than the robbery itself. According to their reports, the suspect had left behind scuba gear, and there was physical evidence to suggest he had actually swum up to the restaurant before sneaking inside. The theory that investigators put together is that the suspect arrived by water, ditched his gear to get inside, and slipped it back on to get away. After grabbing between $10,000 and $20,000 in cash, he dove back into the lake and disappeared. Deputies patrolled the water immediately following the call but found no sign of the suspect.

Photos from the crime scene added to the mystery. A single released by the sheriff’s office shows a figure spray-painting one of the cameras, wearing a wetsuit and hood. It looked less like a usual burglary and more like the setup for a totally bonkers Florida Man headline. The crime immediately evoked comparisons to the country’s most famous unsolved case, the still-unsolved 1971 hijacking by D.B. Cooper. He was an air pirate who parachuted from a plane in the Pacific Northwest with $200,000 and vanished like an urban legend. Like Cooper, the Paddlefish robber pulled off a quick, brazen heist, disappeared into his environment, and was never seen or heard from again. One vanished into the sky of the Pacific Northwest; the other beneath the waters of a Disney lake.

Florida has produced no shortage of weird crime stories, and this one deserves a place among the finest. It wasn’t brash or chaotic, like other strange robberies. It was somehow calculated, even oddly professional, carried out with scuba gear, spray paint, and apparently nothing but sheer nerve.