‘87 Was Good Year for Bank Bandits but Tough on Tellers : County’s 384 Robberies Shattered ’86 Record of 295

At Sanwa Bank’s Westminster branch on Oct. 14, a handsome young man with shoulder-length blond hair handed a teller a note.

It warned: “Hand over money or get shot.” The frightened teller immediately turned over the contents of her cash drawer, which never exceed $1,000.

The man walked nonchalantly from the window and past unsuspecting customers, tucking the sheaf of bills under his T-shirt as a bank camera photographed him. The man, nicknamed Goldilocks by police, remains at large.

The robbery was one of six at the Sanwa branch and 384 in Orange County during 1987--the latter figure far surpassing the previous year’s record of 295.

Although no one was injured in any of the holdups, some tellers at hard-hit banks were so traumatized that they quit. Linda Eastwood, Sanwa’s Westminster branch manager, said she lost three tellers because of bank robberies last year, including one who had faced robbers four times.

“After the last time, she just broke down and shook for hours,” Eastwood said.

FBI officials who monitor bank robbery trends say they are hard-pressed to explain what’s happening in Orange County.

Wylie B. (Bucky) Cox, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Santa Ana office, said officers had arrested many of the area’s known serial bandits before last year’s spate of bank robberies began. The newest robbers, he said, may be recent parolees who learned their trade behind bars.

Holdups Decline Nationally

The county’s escalating bank robbery rate has defied national trends. While bank holdups nationwide have dropped steadily since 1981, in the county they have more than doubled.

Orange County and Los Angeles County, which last year had a record 600 bank holdups, collectively are considered the bank robbery capital of America. That distinction used to belong to New York City.

Jim Neilson, FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, said that California, where a full third of the nation’s bank robberies occur, offers robbers a large number of bank branches near a network of freeways, which offer a handy route of escape. Orange County has 400 banks.

But almost all bank robbers eventually are caught, Neilson said. On the average, they are caught only after they have robbed seven or eight times, almost always to support drug habits that can cost up to $1,000 a day, he said. In Orange County, 84% of the bank robbers eventually land in prison.

Goldilocks so far has defied the odds and the FBI, which considers him one of the most prolific bank robbers in the county. Since Oct. 5, police believe, he has robbed banks at least a dozen times.

But the clear pictures taken of him by bank cameras eventually may bring someone forward to identify him, the FBI says.

Besides installing camera surveillance, many banks are marking bills with exploding red dye, which can be activated to explode 20 seconds after the teller hands it over. The red dye marks the robber and the bills.

Some banks are also hiring armed guards. But Arnold V. Lozano, a Sanwa senior vice president in Los Angeles, said the presence of these guards “may inspire more trouble,” potentially endangering customers and employees.

The cardinal rule at every bank is for the teller to do precisely as he or she is told.

“The tellers are trained from day one that the possibility exists,” Lozano said. “It’s one of the hazards of our business.”

It is this universal cooperation by tellers, Lozano said, that may prompt robbers to choose banks rather than liquor stores or corner markets, where clerks may be more likely to resist and even shoot.

The cooperation also makes bank holdups among the most nonviolent robberies, said Sgt. John McClain of the Santa Ana Police Department, where more than 100 bank robberies occurred in 1987, more than any other Orange County city.

Anaheim, with 60 bank robberies, ranked second, followed by Garden Grove and Huntington Beach, FBI officials said.

Fraud More Costly

For the banks, walk-in robbers are much less costly than credit card fraud, internal theft and delinquent accounts, said C. Howie Hodges II, an assistant manager with the American Bankers Assn. in Washington. Robbery losses rarely exceed $2,500, Hodges said, and those are almost always reimbursed by federal insurance.

“It affects a fraction of 1% of a bank’s reserve,” Hodges said. “(But) it is much more of a spectacular, glamorous type of thing. And the press usually picks up on that more than any other type of loss.”

But it is the most frightening kind of crime for the tellers, particularly when they are threatened with notes like those on file in the FBI’s Santa Ana office:

- “You have just 20 seconds to hand me the money or hell breaks out.”

- “Place all the cash in your drawer on the counter. Quickly and easily. Be dumb and feel a bullet.”

- “If anything goes pop and turns pink, I go bang and you turn red.”

Although no shots were fired in any county bank last year, tellers “never know when one of these guys will be hopped up on dope and do something to them,” Sanwa’s Eastwood said.

‘It’s Not Worth It’

The teller who quit after being robbed four times had reached the point of becoming jumpy every time a customer she did not recognize walked through the door, Eastwood said.

“This gal finally said, ‘It’s not worth it on a teller’s salary,’ and quit,” Eastwood said.

Tellers locally make $6 to $9 an hour to start.

To address the problem of stress among tellers who have been victims, the banking industry is offering psychiatric counseling. In Orange County, Dr. Paul R. Blair, former director of emergency psychiatry at UCI Medical Center, operates a psychiatric consulting service for banks that have been robbed.

“The psychological impact can last as long as six weeks to two years,” Blair said. “A lot of it involves symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. The longer it lasts, the harder it is to fully recover.”

Blair, who has counseled 400 to 600 bank robbery victims in Southern California over the past five years, said the trauma is easily treated in group therapy sessions a few days after the crime.

In 1988, Cox said, the FBI plans to establish a hot line for anonymous tips on suspected bank robbers. He said the FBI also will begin distributing flyers in areas where drug users are known to hang out, offering rewards for information leading to arrests.

Computerized List Kept

Local police are also looking at improving camera surveillance in banks so that pictures of suspects will come out clearer, Anaheim Police Sgt. John Haradon said. Haradon said police also hope to educate tellers more on getting an accurate physical description of a suspect, keying on his height, weight and facial appearance.

In Santa Ana, the FBI’s five-man bank robbery team maintains a computerized list of all bank robberies in the county. They try to match such common denominators as physical description, method of operation and use of notes, Cox said.

Besides Goldilocks, Cox said, the FBI has identified two serial bandits operating in the county, nicknamed Good Ol’ Boy (“because he’s just a good ol’ boy,”) and the Sleaze Bandit (“he just looked sleazy”).

Ultimately, the solution to the bank robbery problem will come not from law enforcement but from increasing acceptance of bank cards at gasoline stations, supermarkets and other stores, reducing the need for banks on every corner, Lozano said.

Until that time comes, however, Lozano predicted that “bank robbers are going to go where the cash is.”