Dyed in Bank Heist : ‘Biker Bandit’ Gets a Faceful

He asks for small bills--5s, 10s and 20s--and FBI agents have nicknamed him the “Old Biker Bandit” because there is a younger bank robber who also escapes by motorcycle.

He sometimes warns bank tellers not to give him “any of that exploding-dye money,” but on Friday he got some anyway.

In what FBI officials believe was his ninth holdup since Aug. 1, the graying bandit robbed a Costa Mesa savings and loan. But a special money bag he escaped with spewed a cloud of red dye once he got outside Western Federal Savings & Loan on West Baker Street, police said.

Authorities were circulating a picture taken by a surveillance camera during an El Toro robbery last month and hoping that someone will make an identification.

Distinctive Appearance

“He’s got a red complexion now, hopefully,” Costa Mesa Police Officer Clay Epperson said with a chuckle.

As the bandit was running out the front door, Epperson was summoned to Western Federal at 10:52 a.m. by the branch manager. He said employees told him that a man with “messy graying brown hair walked into the branch office and presented a note to the teller.

“It basically said, ‘Don’t turn around, don’t panic; give me all your money.’ ”

The teller that the bandit approached had the option of activating a silent alarm but apparently did not believe that she could safely do so, Epperson said. But she did put the small bills in a money bag designed to let off gaseous red dye once it is taken out of a bank. Moments after he fled the building, the man was seen surrounded by a crimson cloud, police said.

Francis A. Calley, senior agent in charge of the FBI office in Santa Ana, said the Old Biker Bandit has been identified through surveillance photographs as the suspect in these other robberies of banks or savings and loans in Orange and Los Angeles counties: Aug. 1, California First Bank in Westminster; Aug. 5, Security Pacific Bank in Buena Park; Aug. 11, Security Pacific Bank in Costa Mesa and Golden State Savings Bank in Torrance; Aug. 15, Barclay’s Bank in Anaheim; Aug. 18, American Savings & Loan in Anaheim and United California Savings in El Toro.

Tuesday he allegedly robbed an American Savings & Loan branch in Huntington Beach, Calley said.