YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — By age 24, she had been married, given birth to a son, gotten a divorce, filed for bankruptcy, and tried to make extra cash as a model. By age 22, he had played plenty of the computer game “Halo” and found a job at an armored car company.

As a couple, they lived a quiet life in the upstairs of an 80-year-old brick house with giant, gnarled sycamores in the front yard.

They also loved to play “Dungeons & Dragons,” and now they’re accused of a plot as far outside the realm of their ordinary lives as that fantasy role-playing game.

Federal prosecutors say Nicole Boyd, boyfriend Roger Lee Dillon, and his mother, Sharon Lee Gregory — none of whom had a criminal record — stole $7.4 million in cash and checks from Armored Transportation Systems in nearby Liberty where he had worked as a driver for about nine months. On the night of November 26, when the company had cash from the busy post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping weekend in the region’s stores, someone entered the building using another employee’s security code — then rearmed the system 24 minutes later.

Five days later, Ms. Boyd, Mr. Dillon, and Ms. Gregory were arrested at a mobile home about 250 miles away in Pipestem, W. Va.

The suspects had left a puzzling trail.

Before leaving with their cat and dog, Ms. Boyd and Mr. Dillon stopped to put the next month’s rent in their landlord’s mailbox, much to her surprise.

“If I was going to steal $7 million, that would not be one of my concerns,” Cookie Bowman, who lives on the house’s lower floor, said.

She didn’t read her mail until three days after the robbery. Tucked between the bills and junk mail was a plastic bag containing cash and a one-word note that read: “SORRY.”

Ms. Bowman doesn’t know what the apology was for. They were perfect tenants, paying the rent on time, not playing loud music or throwing parties, and Mr. Dillon would even haul her trash cans back from the curb.

“I’m still in a little disbelief,” she said.

The caper became the talk of the Rust Belt region where jobs are scarce and drive-thru lottery shacks are patronized by people dreaming of easy millions.

Many in the region have mocked the suspects for allegedly leaving behind clues in Ms. Boyd’s purple pickup truck.

Authorities found receipts from Beckley, W. Va., where a retailer directed the FBI to Pipestem, a nearby town of 633 next to a state park amid rolling mountain vistas. The federal indictment says Ms. Boyd and Mr. Dillon had gone to West Virginia in October to look for a place to hide out.