Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Man Acquitted in Robberies of 2 Banks

A Los Angeles federal jury has acquitted a Santa Clarita man of charges that he robbed a pair of banks of more than $200,000 by taking two bank employees and their families hostage and forcing the women to open their banks’ vaults, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Alex Yepes, 25, was found not guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court of charges stemming from the June 11, 1993, robbery of TransWorld Bank in Canyon Country and the Sept. 17, 1993, theft of a Coast Federal branch in Northridge.

Attorney Gerald Scotti, who defended Yepes, told jurors his client was with friends during both of the robberies and that the real thieves implicated Yepes after he declined their invitation to participate in the holdups.

If convicted, Yepes had faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Scotti described the verdict as “just,” but said when he heard it, Yepes was “flabbergasted and so was his family.”

“There is always a doubt the system will work right but in this case it did,” Scotti said. “Here is a guy who was in prison for nearly a year for something he didn’t do.”

Prosecutors had alleged that Yepes, along with several accomplices, held TransWorld officer Toula Demosthenous and eight others hostage in her own Canyon Country home and Coast Federal officer Terry Duranso and four others captive in Duranso’s Canoga Park home.

Yepes was also accused of guarding the women overnight with some of his accomplices and then accompanying them to their banks the next morning to force the women to open the vaults and automatic teller machines.

An estimated $214,000 was stolen in the robberies.

Assistant U.S. Atty. David R. Fields, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment on the verdict Thursday, but Demosthenous said she was disappointed.

“To be honest, everybody is very, very upset,” Demosthenous said in an interview. “When seven people point at (Yepes) and say, ‘It’s him’. . . . It’s like no justice.”

Yepes, who had pleaded not guilty to the charges, was the first of five suspects charged in the robberies to stand trial. Two others have pleaded guilty and two remain at large.

Last month, Chad Pelch, 24, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to robbery and kidnaping charges stemming from the TransWorld heist in Canyon Country.

Darren Patrick Towers of Saugus, who was scheduled to testify against Yepes, pleaded guilty in December to his involvement and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Pelch’s brother, Brett, 26, who is charged in both robberies, and Donald Sallee, 26, who is charged with participating in the Coast Federal robbery, have not been caught.