A thief slipped into a San Diego strip club before dawn and left with $25,300 in one-dollar bills, and the owner says the route to the safe points to an inside job.
Quick Take
- The theft happened at Exposé, a gentlemen’s club in Kearny Mesa, and surveillance showed the suspect breaking in around 5 a.m.
- Owner Dino Palmiotto says the thief used an alarm code tied to a former manager who had been fired two months earlier.
- Palmiotto also says each employee with safe access has a unique code, which makes the breach look personal, not random.
- Police are still investigating, so the inside job theory remains an allegation, not a proven fact.
How the Theft Unfolded
Video released from the club shows a masked intruder climbing a fence, breaking in, and heading straight for the cash room. Palmiotto says the thief knew exactly where to go, which is why he believes the break-in was not a blind smash-and-grab. The owner says the loss totaled $25,300, all in one-dollar bills, a detail that suggests the safe held tip money collected over time.
The alarm system added another layer to the suspicion. According to Palmiotto, the code used in the burglary matched a former manager who had been terminated before the theft. He also says every worker with safe access has a personal code tied to a name, which means the wrong code use would stand out fast. That is the heart of his claim: this was not just a burglary, but a breach that smells like insider knowledge.
Why the Owner Sees an Inside Job
Cash-heavy clubs have a basic weakness. They handle a lot of physical money, and that creates pressure points that outsiders often cannot guess. When a thief goes directly to the safe, uses a code linked to a former employee, and appears to know the layout, owners naturally look inward first. Palmiotto has also said the suspect seemed to be communicating by phone during the break-in, which deepens the suspicion of coordination.
That does not make the inside job theory settled. It means the public record currently leans on the owner’s account and the surveillance clip, not on a police filing that names a culprit or confirms who shared what. The San Diego Police Department says the case is under investigation and has not released more details. So the strongest fair reading is simple: the clues point inward, but the case has not been proven in court.
What This Says About High-Cash Businesses
This story fits a familiar pattern in businesses that run on tips and late-night traffic. Cash piles up fast. Access is often limited to a small group. And once a code or key leaks, the damage can be instant. Palmiotto says he has tightened security and is offering a reward for information, which is a classic move when owners think the answer may be inside the building rather than outside it.
Thief steals over $25K in one dollar bills at Kearny Mesa strip club https://t.co/8eMRJoQUur
— CBS 8 San Diego (@CBS8) July 1, 2026
There is also a broader lesson here for business owners who think routine access rules are enough. Unique codes help only if they stay unique. Former employees can become weak spots if systems are not reset fast. That is why internal theft is such a hard problem: it often looks like normal business until the moment it does not. In this case, the missing bills were loud. The quieter issue is who knew enough to take them.
Sources:
nypost.com, yahoo.com, exposesd.com, scribd.com, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
