‘It was like a game to them.’ As massive dime-theft case heads toward trial, new details emerge.

Given the truck’s costly cargo — $750,000 worth of dimes — it was a risky move for the driver of a tractor trailer headed from Philadelphia to Florida to park it overnight next to a Northeast Philadelphia Walmart.

And as luck would have it, a group of thieves was driving around that night looking for things to steal and stumbled upon the truck. They broke in with tire irons, authorities said, then stole millions of coins by dumping them into trash cans and then drove off, leaving thousands of dimes strewn across the parking lot.

The next day, prosecutors said, one of the thieves posed for a photograph lying in the bed of a pickup truck filled with silver coins. And on text messages, crew members planned a “victory dinner” at a casino.

But as the coin heist was making news across the country, law enforcement officials were beginning to close in on the culprits — a group that prosecutors now say includes 10 people who took part in a series of thefts in 2023, raking in stolen goods as diverse as refrigerators, frozen crab legs, liquor, and air-conditioning units.

In recent months, details have emerged in court documents linking some of the men to violent criminal organizations.

One of the dime thieves, Rakiem Savage, was a key member of overlapping groups known as Omerta and Zoo Gang, prosecutors said, whose members sought to boost their wealth and status in North Philadelphia by running illegal gambling rings, defrauding unemployment programs, using counterfeit money, and committing murder while targeting perceived rivals.

Savage has been charged with crimes including conspiracy to commit racketeering in that case, in addition to theft and conspiracy charges related to the truck heists.

Two other codefendants in the dime theft were members of a gang called Dirty Block, prosecutors said, and have been separately charged with carjacking a FedEx truck in 2022 that was carrying 9 kilograms of cocaine.

Those details were largely left unaddressed in federal court Tuesday, as one of the defendants, Aikeem Palmer, was released on bail to await trial for charges including robbery and theft.

U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone agreed with Palmer’s lawyer that he hadn’t been accused of committing violence during the heists and noted that others accused of working with him — including two of his brothers — had also been released from custody to await trial.

“He’s not the ringleader,” said Palmer’s attorney, Luis Ortiz.

Prosecutors said the thieves had displayed a cavalier attitude toward their criminal capers.

“It was like a game to them,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Bowerman said in court Tuesday.

The most eye-catching heist was the dime theft, which occurred April 13, 2023. The truck’s driver was supposed to transport the trailer and its 15 pallets of coins from the U.S. Mint in Center City to Florida. But he parked overnight in the Walmart parking lot on the 4300 block of Byberry Road, where the thieves struck.

Palmer and his codefendants made off with more than $200,000 worth of coins, prosecutors said, and afterward, they sent a flurry of text messages to each other. “We made it!” Savage wrote alongside a screenshot of a news article about the heist.

Then came the photo of Malik Palmer — Aikeem Palmer’s brother — “swimming in a truck bed of dimes,” prosecutors said. The men also talked about going to a Live! Casino for a “victory dinner” to celebrate their haul.

The group had committed earlier crimes, prosecutors said, and communicated about those extensively via texts as well.

In January 2023, prosecutors said, the group stole 36 televisions from a tractor trailer in Northeast Philadelphia, and one of them sent a group text saying: “Who need some big ass TV’s.”

Two months later, prosecutors said, several group members stole 10,000 pounds of frozen turkey wings from a truck parked on the 2800 block of Charter Road.

“Y’all got more wings,” one of the men said in a group text.

Aikeem Palmer took part in the thefts of thousands of pounds of frozen crab legs, prosecutors said, and sent videos of the loot to some of his accused coconspirators.

In all, prosecutors said, the group was responsible for stealing merchandise worth more than $1.5 million from 10 different victims.

Still, some questions remain unanswered — including what became of all the dimes.

Some of the money was exchanged or converted at banks or credit unions in the weeks after the heist, prosecutors said. But the total accounted for remained far lower than the more than $200,000 worth of coins they were accused of stealing.

It remains unclear whether the answer will be revealed if any of the men takes the case before a jury. A trial is currently scheduled to begin in August.