Tag: bank robbery

OK – the bomb turned out to be 2 jars of spaghetti sauce

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Hey – it could’ve been more dangerous

A woman who was caught red-handed with two jars of spaghetti sauce [har!] after robbing a bank has pleaded guilty to bank robbery and explosives charges.

According to police on April 6, Ophelia A. Neal told a clerk at the Fifth Third Bank in Clinton Township that she had a bomb in a cloth bag and demanded money.

Neal, 53, a parole absconder who has previous convictions for fraud, marijuana possession and assault, made her escape with an undisclosed amount of cash in a car driven by a man.

She was later arrested by police who scanned the cloth bag and discovered it contained two cans of spaghetti sauce.

Although the bank robbery occurred in Macomb County, Neal pleaded guilty in Oakland County Circuit Court where she was originally wanted for violating her parole.

I can think of some supermarket brands of spaghetti sauce might be as dangerous to your health over time – as a bomb. 🙂

Citizens’ rights vs. police use of technology

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On the afternoon of June 2, the authorities say, a former music teacher named Christian Paetsch walked into a Wells Fargo bank waving a gun and ordered everyone to lie down.

About 15 minutes later, a phalanx of police cars descended upon an intersection a few miles away, blockading dozens of shocked motorists — including Mr. Paetsch, whom the authorities had tracked with a GPS device buried in the $26,000 he was accused of stealing.

But with only the faintest physical description and unsure which vehicle the device was in, the police trained their weapons on all 20 cars at the intersection and ordered people to show their hands. For nearly two hours, the police ordered every driver and passenger to step out of their cars, even handcuffing some of them, before discovering the missing money and two loaded firearms in Mr. Paetsch’s S.U.V.

The case, now winding its way through the federal court system, is being watched by Fourth Amendment lawyers and law enforcement experts. While advanced technology now gives the police the power to shadow a suspect moments after a crime is committed, there are still legal questions over how wide a net the authorities can cast while in pursuit.

At issue is not Mr. Paetsch’s involvement in the robbery. Rather, his lawyer, Matthew Belcher, a federal public defender, has argued that evidence seized from Mr. Paetsch’s vehicle should be thrown out on the grounds that the roadblock was unconstitutional.

The crook’s lawyer offers a lawyerly interpretation of how he’s trying to get his client off. He says the coppers just had a hunch. Wrong. They had a signal from an RFID tag planted in the stolen money.

If old tech was still being used, a dye marker would have exploded and some cop would have seen a car go by with red dye on the windows – or at least a track or two indicating the direction and possible intersection to corral the crook. An RFID tag is a lot clearer over distance, easier to hide from a thief.

It may not seem precise, the local coppers certainly did a crappy job of handling the public – but, then, that’s what they’re instructed to do when the call is for “armed and dangerous” – the FBI didn’t show with their RFID detector for an hour and the Aurora PD didn’t have one.

Prime suspects in Afghan bank robbery? Afghan police officers!

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American expertise in training bank security

The bank robbers were men who were often seen around town in uniform – police uniforms. They were, in fact, police.

Three Afghan National Police officers fled a bank in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province after breaking in after hours and stealing more than 29 million afghanis (about $550,000) late Friday night, according to Gen. Ghulamullah Nuristani, the provincial police chief.

You might call it an inside job. The officers were assigned to guard the bank, a local branch of Afghanistan’s central bank, Nuristani said.

Two of the officers were cornered in a nearby home and arrested, Nuristani told The Los Angeles Times. He said the home belongs to Abdul Rahman Kahan, who had been in charge of security guards for the province’s previous government.

Police recovered most of the money and were pursuing the third bandit and the rest of the cash, Nuristani said.

Nuristani said he suspected that powerful local figures loyal to the previous provincial government may have had a hand in organizing the robbery.

“Possibly there are some power-brokers behind this,” Nuristani said by telephone from the isolated, mountainous province in northeastern Afghanistan. “The police have launched an investigation to find out who else is behind this.”

It’s doubtful they’ll provide a larger number of police to guard local banks, though. That would diminish the size of each copper’s share in future robberies.

Elderly woman threatens AIDs infection while robbing bank

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A woman robbed a Colorado bank by passing a note saying she would infect a teller with AIDS if the clerk didn’t hand over money, police said on Friday.

Jeff Satur, spokesman for the Longmont, Colorado police department, said detectives are searching for a pale woman between the ages of 55 and 75 with a “boney build.”

Satur said a woman, who was wearing a train conductor’s cap and a gray sweat shirt, walked into a Wells Fargo bank inside a Safeway grocery store on Thursday night and handed a note to a teller.

“She indicated she had AIDS and would give it to a teller if she didn’t cooperate,” Satur said.

The woman coughed frequently into a blue bandana during the robbery, and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, Satur said…

She is described as about 5-feet 6 inches tall, and weighing between 130 and 150 pounds.

Eeoough! That could be scarey.

Bank robbery + run your mouth on Facebook = Busted!

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Ricko Gee

Two days before a west Houston bank heist, a 19-year-old bank teller named Estefany Martinez posted a cryptic status update on her Facebook page: “Get $$$…”

What looked on surveillance video to be a classic bank robbery — with armed, masked suspects and terrorized bank tellers — turned out to be an amateurish inside job, allegedly orchestrated by two 19-year-old tellers with the help of a boyfriend and an older brother.

Using an incriminating trail of Facebook posts left by Estefany Martinez and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Ricky “Ricko Gee” Gonzalez, detectives arrested four suspects this week on bank theft charges, alleging they made off with $62,000.

Their Facebook pages held not-so-subtle clues: Two days after the robbery, Martinez posted: “IM RICH …” followed by a rhyming expletive.

“WIPE MY TEETH WITH HUNDEREDS …” her boyfriend allegedly posted the day after the heist. He also boasted of wiping another part of his anatomy with $50 bills…

“I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t post pictures of yourself on Facebook smoking pot or drinking because employers are now looking at Facebook pages,” Martinez’ attorney said. “But I never knew there should be a warning not to post about a bank robbery that’s been committed…”

The celebratory Facebook posts started shortly after they divided the loot at Rivera’s apartment, officials say.

“U HAVE TO PAST THE LINE SOMETIMES!! TO GET DIS MONEY!!” Gonzalez posted on his Facebook page the day after the theft.

RTFA for the silly details.

We get to say this one more time: becoming a crook doesn’t require brains or education.

Bomb factory found in San Diego rental home

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The man accused of turning his North County rental home into a makeshift “bomb factory” initially denied to authorities last week that he had anything explosive in his backyard, according to a search warrant affidavit returned Tuesday morning at Vista Superior Court.

Authorities who were called to the home on Via Scott on Thursday said George Djura Jakubec, 54, “appeared evasive and nervous during his conversation” with an Escondido fire captain, despite the fact that a gardener had just been injured in an explosion there, the warrant said…

After continued questioning, investigators got Jakubec to admit to possessing additional explosives and bomb-making materials that were in the backyard and inside the house, the court documents said.

The nine to 12 pounds of chemicals — hexamethelyne triperoxide diamine, pentaerythritol tetranitrate and erythritol tetranitrate — turned out to represent the largest such find in a single location in the United States, prosecutors later said. Thirteen grenades wrapped with shrapnel and nine detonators also were found.

Bomb technicians were still determining Tuesday how to clear the home of the highly dangerous and volatile cache of chemicals, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Jan Caldwell. The house remained sealed off, and the residents of two neighboring houses have not been allowed to return home.

Jakubec remains jailed in Vista on $5 million bail. He has been charged with 26 counts of manufacturing or possessing explosives. He also was charged with robbing two banks in San Diego this year…

The gardener who was injured, Mario Garcia, was recovering from his injuries at home and said Tuesday he gives thanks every day that he survived the blast. He and his wife are staying with their daughters in Fallbrook after losing their home to foreclosure a few months ago.

RTFA. One of those cautionary tales that suggests you treat your neighbors with due respect – but, keep an eye on what they bury in the backyard.

Dumb crook of the month – so far!

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The geezer shot by cops after botching a Manhattan bank robbery ought to have his picture in the dictionary under “career criminal.”

John Stolarz has been running afoul of the law since he was 18. He’s committed crimes in at least nine states. He’s even busted out of prison a few times. Known by the old-school nickname “Johnny Shades,” the 69-year-old Stolarz was shot Thursday after cops say he tried to stick up a Chase branch with a knife.

He had been out of prison only one day…

He most recent stay in lock-up – 22 years – followed convictions for robbing a string of banks in Louisiana, Nevada, Washington state and Utah.

The strapping ex-con was released from a New Jersey federal prison Wednesday morning and was supposed to go to Philadelphia to pick up a pre-paid ticket to Salt Lake City. He was due to serve eight months in a halfway house…

Stolarz entered the Chase Bank at 2 Penn Plaza and armed with a knife, confronted a woman working in the customer service area. He demand wanted cash, fifties and hundreds.

But she told him there was no money in her section, and when an assistant manager came over and told the suspect much the same thing, he grew agitated…

Shades left, followed by the assistant manager who flagged down a police officer.

That cop and his partner followed Shades down the stairs into Penn Station…finally to a Amtrak loading dock area, where cops say Stolarz, 10-inch steak knife in his hand, refused orders to drop his weapon.

When the 6-foot-1-inch suspect moved toward Officer Edgar Perez, the six-year veteran fired twice, one bullet striking the suspect in his right thigh.

Idiot.

Police Rob Bank for Practice, Endangering Everyone

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Police chiefs in China have been slammed for hiring actors to rob a bank as a training exercise – without telling anyone else.

Only the director and the deputy director of the Zhenzhou police department knew it was a drill – everyone else, including the bank, thought it was a real raid.

Four ‘robbers’ rushed into the Post Office Bank, disarmed security and demanded all the people inside drop to the floor. They even snatched a customer’s bag containing ÂŁ20,000, reports Guangzhou Daily.

Critics said police officers, unaware that it was a training drill, could easily have used their guns on the fleeing robbers.

They were also concerned about the psychological effect on bank cashiers and customers who had been put through a traumatic situation.

The kind of story that can be completely ruined by healthy skepticism.