Henry Rono Charged With Defrauding Banks

Henry Rono, a Kenyan middle-distance runner who set four world records in 1978, was held Friday on charges that he conned bank tellers in at least three towns in New Jersey out of hundreds of dollars.

Rono, 34, was arraigned Thursday on charges of theft by deception filed by police in Hackensack and Ridgefield Park. Similar charges were filed Friday by police in the nearby Hudson County community of North Bergen, a Bergen County Jail officer said.

“He’s a marathon man running from bank to bank pulling flim-flams,” Ridgefield detective Rudolph Eger said.

Rono was arrested Thursday at a Hackensack office of the Oritani Savings and Loan Assn. after a teller said that Rono was the man who had deceived a teller at another branch in the city in September.

In that incident, police said, a man confused a teller by first asking her to change nine $100 bills and then saying he wanted to open an account for $900.

She did not notice that he gave her back only $600, and then returned $900 to him when he changed his mind and asked for the money back. The shortage was not discovered until after the man had left.

The Oritani branch in Ridgefield Park lost about $320 in a similar incident in June, Eger said. The North Bergen branch lost about $380 in July.

Drew Eckmann, who lives at a Hackensack home where Rono had been staying in recent weeks, said Rono was not in New Jersey when the first two incidents occurred.