Eideard

The FBI suspects an Idaho woman jailed over a California heist is the “Bad Hair Bandit” wanted for 20 bank robberies and a judge set her bail on Thursday at $500,000 following her recent arrest.

A robber dubbed the “Bad Hair Bandit” — named for her habit of wearing cheap, ill-fitting wigs — is believed to be behind 20 robberies in four states since December…

They said Cynthia Van Holland, 47, was believed to be that person, although witnesses say she was not wearing a wig in the heist that led to her arrest.

Van Holland and her husband, Christopher Alonzo, 26, were arrested on Monday after Van Holland was accused of robbing the Bank of the West in Auburn, 30 miles northeast of Sacramento, before fleeing in a car driven by Alonzo…

Placer County sheriff’s deputies nabbed Van Holland and her husband a dozen miles from the Bank of the West after a witness gave the license plate and model of their car, said Ayn Sandalo Dietrich, spokeswoman for the FBI office in Seattle…

Agents investigating a string of bank robberies in Washington state and one robbery each in Montana, Oregon and California, believe Van Holland is the robber with the fake hair, Dietrich said.

“The wigs are really what stand out,” she said.

Twenty robberies in four states in eight months. Dumb enough to be a small-time crook – I guess you’re dumb enough to think you’re never going to be caught.

A 59-year-old man has been jailed in Gastonia, N.C., on charges of larceny after allegedly robbing an RBC Bank for $1 so he could get health care in prison. Richard James Verone handed a female teller a note demanding the money and claiming that he had a gun, according to the police report.

He then sat down and waited for police to arrive. “… I say, ‘I’ll be sitting right over here, on the chair, waiting for the police,’” Verone told reporters, recalling the June 9 robbery in an interview from Gaston County Jail.

And wait for the police, he did.

“He’s sitting on the sofa as you walk in the front door,” the bank teller said in a 911 call.

Police arrested Verone where he sat. He was unarmed.

Verone said he asked for $1 to show that his motives were medical, not monetary, according to news reports. With a growth in his chest, two ruptured disks and no job, Verone hoped a three-year stint in prison would afford him the health care he needed.

“I’m sort of a logical person and that was my logic, what I came up with,” Verone told reporters. “If it is called manipulation, then out of necessity because I need medical care, then I guess I am manipulating the courts to get medical care.”

Oh. No one else noticed we live in a nation that guarantees better health care for criminals than ordinary citizens?

Our fear-driven politicians will not notice the passing of a poor man like Richard James Verone through their banking system, jail system – anymore than any other small creature invading their palaces for a moment or two.

Thanks, Helen

A bank robber who placed a Walmart bag on his head before passing a note with his real name on it was held at gunpoint by a customer today until Palm Bay police arrived and arrested him.

Floyd Francis said in the note that he wanted to rob the bank without a weapon because “I am a son of God.” He wrote that he goes by the name YungSoulji and provided the address of his MySpace.com page. Later, at the Police Department, he said Jesus told him to “go get money this morning, today.”

“I am a black Muslim. I am a black Christian. I am a Black Rastafarian … Always smoke weed get high,” the holdup note reads, in part.

Francis, 23, went into Space Coast Credit Union, 152 Malabar Road, a little before 2 p.m. and put the bag on his head while in line, then took off the bag and handed a teller the bag and the note, police said.

The note instructed the teller to, “put di money innah di Bag.” The teller complied.

A customer who saw what was going on and has a concealed-weapons permit got a gun from his car, pointed it at Francis and ordered him to the ground…

What is there to say? Anyone dumb enough to believe all the crap he believes – should commit the dumbest crime of the week?

Shon R. Hopwood was not a particularly sophisticated bank robber. “We would walk into a bank with firearms, tell people to get down, take the money and run,” he said the other day, recalling five robberies in rural Nebraska in 1997 and 1998 that yielded some $200,000 and more than a decade in federal prison.

Mr. Hopwood spent much of that time in the prison law library, and it turned out he was better at understanding the law than breaking it. He transformed himself into something rare at the top levels of the American bar, and unheard of behind bars: an accomplished Supreme Court practitioner.

He prepared his first petition for certiorari — a request that the Supreme Court hear a case — for a fellow inmate on a prison typewriter in 2002. Since Mr. Hopwood was not a lawyer, the only name on the brief was that of the other prisoner, John Fellers.

The court received 7,209 petitions that year from prisoners and others too poor to pay the filing fee, and it agreed to hear just eight of them. One was Fellers v. United States.

“It was probably one of the best cert. petitions I have ever read,” said Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general who has argued more than 50 cases in the Supreme Court. “It was just terrific.”

Mr. Waxman agreed to take the case on without payment. But he had one condition.

“I will represent you,” Mr. Waxman recalled telling Mr. Fellers, “if we can get this guy Shon Hopwood involved…”

The former solicitor general showed the bank robber drafts of his briefs. The two men consulted about how to frame the arguments, discussed strategy and tried to anticipate questions from the justices…

In January 2004, Mr. Waxman called Mr. Hopwood at the federal prison in Pekin, Ill. They had won a 9-to-0 victory.

RTFA. The dude is out of the slammer, now. Working for a printer of Supreme Court briefs. Getting ready to go to law school.

He has been captured by bank surveillance cameras in four states, sneering and holding a pistol sideways during heists.

Yet another dipshit who learned to be a gangster by watching television and movies. Since you [1] don’t need a gun to rob a bank and [2] there’s a reason the gunsights are on top.

The FBI is searching for this suspect, who they say has robbed at least 10 banks in the South. Now authorities hope to catch the serial bank robber by plastering his image on electronic billboards throughout the South. He…has robbed at least 10 banks in Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee…

The brazen bandit has been captured in surveillance footage sporting the same close-cropped hairstyle and goatee in many of the holdups. He does not seem to make any effort to cover his face and sometimes is seen aiming a handgun sideways, showing his tattoos on both forearms as he gestures at bank employees…

The suspect has not yet harmed anybody in the robberies, but the FBI considers him extremely dangerous.

“This guy has made no effort to hide the gun,” Keithley said . “He has threatened the use of it in every bank robbery that he has committed. He has put the gun in the faces of tellers, threatened to use the gun against them…. So certainly we need to get this guy in custody before he does harm someone.”

Stupid, ignorant, ego-smitten idiots are usually limited to being footsoldiers in the world of professional gangsters.

Oh – and speaking of brains – the FBI press release sparking coverage included photos of this thug. Which most beancounter newspapers haven’t printed.

UPDATE: This thug’s name is Chad E. Schaffner and he has been caught. A vacationing, retired highway patrol officer paid attention to the behavior of another resident at the same motel – looked around the Web for more info – called the local coppers and they arrested Schaffner without a problem.

Peoria Illinois police quickly apprehended a 13-year-old boy they said used a handgun to rob South Side Bank on Monday morning.

The robbery occurred about 11:34 a.m. at the bank’s 2119 SW Adams St. location, and by 12:10 the suspect was in custody. The Peoria teen was apprehended in a garage behind a house at 927 S. Louisa St. in South Peoria.

Police combed the area immediately around the bank, looking for a teen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, black pants and a red bandana over his face. They also were told that a red dye package, which was placed in a bag of money the suspect took from the bank, had exploded and possibly covered the suspect…

According to Burgess, police eventually located the suspect hiding in the garage near the alley off Louisa. The suspect, who police haven’t identified because he is a juvenile, was hiding behind a couch in the garage at 927 Louisa. His sweatshirt was covered with reddish-colored dye.

After apprehending the suspect, police continued to canvas the neighborhood. Burgess said they were able to locate the gun and money, which the suspect discarded while being pursued.

The little thug will be properly treated as a juvenile offender. Receive some education [I hope] along with time off the streets. And, frankly, I hope he spends some time learning the technical skills required to use a shovel, a broom, maybe even a hammer.

Retraining his brain and body through responsible social, physical activities can be productive – in my experience.

A hapless thief drilled his way into a French bank at the weekend, but missed the safe and instead found himself in a lavatory where he was promptly arrested.

The 21-year-old broke into a building adjoining a branch of Banque Populaire in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille in the early hours of Saturday morning, La Provence newspaper said.

The paper said the man, who came from Belgium and was not named, thought that he was going to end up in a room housing safe deposit boxes but instead drilled into the lavatories.

Alarms were triggered when he broke through the wall and police caught the man when they arrived on the scene.

Gotta buy one of those new-fangled GPS units, dude!

Toronto police arrested a financial services executive on 10 counts of bank robbery and said he’s a suspect in 16 others in and around the city. Kevin Pinto was in Toronto court to enter his plea, this week.

Police said Pinto went to a downtown police station with a lawyer and surrendered, hours after police released high-quality bank security images taken during a recent robbery to television and newspaper media.

Pinto works as vice president of compliance at the investment firm Paradigm Capital, which Detective Al Phillips told the Toronto Star was a real break from the norm.

“The last thing you expect in a bank robber is somebody from that community, who works in banking.”

The 26 robberies began in 2003 and spread from Toronto. Police dubbed the thief the “Exchange Bandit” because in each instance the robber started talking to the teller about exchange rates for U.S. currency before passing the hold-up note, the report said.

Detective Phillips is a little naive.