Slain Suspect Served Time for Bank Robbery : Shooting: Authorities think he carried out an April holdup at the bank near where he was killed Wednesday. They say he fired at officers before being gunned down.

A suspect shot dead by police outside a Costa Mesa bank Wednesday is a convicted bank robber who is believed to have held up the same bank in April, authorities said Thursday.

The man, identified as John R. Mazak, 48, of Mission Viejo, served six years of a 26-year sentence at the federal prison in Lompoc after being convicted of armed bank robbery in New Mexico and felony weapons violations in Wisconsin, according to prison records. He was paroled in December, 1989.

Investigators were tight-lipped about the shooting investigation Thursday but said Costa Mesa police were returning fire when Mazak was felled in a hail of about 20 shots in a parking lot near the Bank of Yorba Linda, 1700 Adams Ave. Investigators did not say how many officers were involved.

“Mr. Mazak was firing at the police at the time that police shot him,” Supervising Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans said. “Mr. Mazak fired at the officers. The officers returned fire.”

A free-lance paralegal, Mazak had been behind on his rent lately, even though he carried large wads of cash, according to a real estate broker who helped him find a rental tract home in Mission Viejo in May.

“He carried a lot of cash on him. We couldn’t verify any checking accounts. He carried cash only,” said Monte Burghardt, a Laguna Niguel broker who said he saw Mazak’s rental application rejected by several landlords because of poor credit.

Burghardt said Mazak was friendly and chatted about his upbringing in Wisconsin and his hobby of weightlifting.

“He’s a real laid-back guy, real mellow. He’s real big--wore Hawaiian shirts all the time,” Burghardt said. “We talked about his football days. He told me how growing up in Wisconsin his family owned a bar and, because of his size, at 13 or 14 he was working there.”

The broker said Mazak was worried about crime and indicated on his rental application that he had left a Costa Mesa apartment in order to “move to a better area.” In May, Mazak rented a four-bedroom home with a swimming pool in Mission Viejo for about $1,500 to $1,600 a month, Burghardt said. The landlord declined to comment.

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Neighbors said they had little contact with Mazak and knew nothing about him except that he shared the blue and white house with two women, several children and a dog.

“They were fine neighbors. They looked like ordinary neighbors,” said next-door neighbor Charlotte Shapiro.

The district attorney’s office declined to discuss its investigation. Such inquiries are conducted any time police officers are involved in on-duty shootings.

Bank employees who spotted Mazak outside the bank building Wednesday afternoon recognized him as the same person who pulled a gun on a bank manager in April after demanding an immediate loan. On Thursday, authorities confirmed their suspicions.

“We believe he is the subject that robbed the Bank of Yorba Linda on April 20,” said FBI Special Agent Gary Morley of the bureau’s office in Santa Ana. Morley said authorities planned to review open bank-robbery cases to see if Mazak matched the descriptions of suspects in those incidents.

The bank employees who saw Mazak called police, then trailed him as he walked away on Adams Avenue. When police arrived, Mazak led them on a chase through a nearby health club and into the parking lot where the showdown occurred.

Prison records indicate that Mazak landed in Lompoc after being sentenced to 20 years for a bank robbery in New Mexico in 1984, on top of a six-year sentence the year before for weapons violations in Wisconsin. Federal records indicate he had a previous felony conviction, but information before 1981 was not available on the prison system’s computer.

The last time Costa Mesa police shot anyone fatally was in April, 1992, when a Huntington Beach man suspected of credit card fraud and drug offenses pulled a gun on officers who approached him outside a pancake restaurant. A police officer was wounded in that incident.

Times correspondent Lynn Franey contributed to this story.