French cash delivery man arrested after a van with €3 million vanishes

Two cash delivery workers in France got a shock when they found their money-filled van had vanished, along with the third member of their team.

The van was soon found nearby, but there was no sign of the 28-year-old driver or €3.4 million in cash.

He was eventually tracked down to a flat in Amiens, along with some of the missing money.

The suspect, named as Adrien Derbez, was arrested in the city on Tuesday evening.

According to news agency AFP, an estimated €1.5m is still missing.

The sudden vanishing act happened early on Monday morning. At about 6am, the team of three were making a routine cash delivery in their security van to a Western Union branch in Aubervilliers, on the outskirts of Paris.

Two of them took the ordered amount of cash inside, leaving the third man to watch the vehicle.

"When they came back out, the van and the driver were gone," a police source told AFP.

A few blocks away, the white van from the Loomis cash transit company was discovered with its doors open and contents emptied - and no sign of the driver.

On Tuesday, police appealed for witnesses and released a photograph and description of Derbez.

Following a tip-off, police raided an apartment in Amiens that evening, French media report.

At around 5pm, officers allegedly found Derbez trying to escape through a window carrying several bags filled with banknotes, French broadcaster BFMTV said.

Three other people have been arrested since as part of the investigation. A large sum of money was also recovered, and was being counted to see how much, if any, was missing, the local prosecutor said.

The theft has similarities to the famous case of Toni Musulin, a Frenchman who stole some €11.6 million from the security van he was driving in 2009.

He vanished, along with the cash, in November that year, briefly becoming an internet superstar in France for his meticulously planned and bloodless heist.

However, most of the cash was found in a garage, and Musulin handed himself into police in Monaco days later.

He spent four years in prison.