Movie Mystery: The 2000 Oscars Heist [from Very Special Episodes]
Noble Blood
iHeartPodcasts and Grim & Mild
4.7 • 13.9K Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2000, weeks before the Academy Awards ceremony, 55 Oscars vanished during shipment to Los Angeles. The disappearance triggered a frantic search. Then, in a twist worthy of a movie plot, a man digging through a grocery store dumpster stumbled on dozens of missing trophies. He was hailed as a hero. But that was only the beginning.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:09.4 | Moving boxes. That's all Willie Full Gear wanted, some cardboard moving boxes. |
| 0:17.4 | It's March 2000 and 61-year-old Willie, a junk scavenger by trade, |
| 0:23.6 | decides to look inside a dumpster behind the Food for Less grocery store. |
| 0:29.3 | He's in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles. |
| 0:32.9 | He figures it's a good place to find some discarded packaging. |
| 0:37.1 | He's right. Inside this large orange container full of trash |
| 0:41.3 | are nearly a dozen boxes. |
| 0:44.3 | Willie picks one up. |
| 0:46.3 | It's obviously heavy. |
| 0:48.3 | He opens it. |
| 0:50.3 | Inside, he sees what looks like a figure, |
| 0:53.3 | maybe a toy made of brass. |
| 0:56.7 | When he takes a closer look, it's something he's only ever seen on television. |
| 1:02.3 | An Academy Award Trophy. |
| 1:05.5 | Better known as Oscar, the gleaming gold-plated award handed out to a select few actors and filmmakers each year. |
| 1:15.3 | Willie looks through the rest of the packages. |
| 1:18.7 | It isn't just one Oscar. |
| 1:21.4 | It's four or five to a box. |
| 1:24.5 | As Willie keeps opening boxes, he finds more and more of them. In total, over four |
| 1:31.9 | dozen Oscars are in this smelly dumpster off Venice Boulevard. What these Oscars are doing |
| 1:40.0 | in the garbage is a pretty incredible story. And what happens to Willie Full Gear after he finds |
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