But Mr. Gibbons was more furious with Mr. O’Connor, who he felt had fingered the other men in the scheme and kept most of the Brink’s cash, Ms. Gibbons, a construction executive in New York, said. He decided to head upstate to confront Mr. O’Connor and borrowed a green Toyota Tercel that belonged to Mr. Quinn and his wife at the time, the actress Patti D’Arbanville.

In an interview, Mr. Quinn said Mr. Gibbons had told him to notify Mr. Gibbons’s brother if he never returned. He never did. The car was found abandoned in an Applebee’s parking lot upstate. In 1999, his dismembered body was found washed up in Lake Ontario. It went unidentified until 2011.

Mr. Millar presumably never detected that federal agents were watching him in his Queens neighborhood. He continued his spending spree using $20 bills — the denomination of the Brink’s cash.

There were vacations for his family and rare comic books for himself. He opened KAC Comics and Collectibles near his apartment.

“It’s a fantasy world you can get lost in,” Mr. Hawkins, the retired F.B.I. agent, said of the comic book fixation. “Comics probably appealed to him, and they never really lost their appeal, I guess. Plus, it’s a good way to launder the money. It’s like buying Krugerrands or something.”

When Mr. Millar wanted a $26,000 Ford Explorer, he gave Father Moloney the cash to buy the vehicle and kept it in the priest’s name. Federal agents tailing Mr. Millar wound up connecting the license plates to Father Moloney.

The priest said recently that he had been tipped off that agents were watching Mr. Millar. “I’m very well connected to the underworld and the upper world — it’s part of my job,” he said, adding that Mr. Millar ignored warnings to curtail his spending. “You think he would have hid the money or something,” Father Moloney said. “I knew he’d trip over his own feet eventually.”