‘Old Man Bandit’ Sentenced to 40 Years in Prison : Courts: Edwin W. Loftus, 63, described as looking ‘like anybody’s grandfather,’ admitted to a string of robberies.

A 63-year-old convicted robber known as the “Old Man Bandit” was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to a string of armed robberies, authorities said.

Edwin W. Loftus pleaded guilty in Los Angeles Superior Court to 10 counts of armed robbery. Although he originally faced 39 felony counts and a 90-year sentence, the judge gave him the lesser sentence because Loftus “would no longer be a danger to society after he served that time,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Karen Thorp, the prosecutor.

“The earliest he will be out of prison, including prison time credits, is when he turns 81,” said Thorp.

Loftus was originally accused of 27 counts of second-degree robbery, four counts of receiving stolen property, three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, three counts of attempted robbery, one count of evading arrest, and one count of illegal possession of a gun, for crimes that occurred over a four-year span ending in 1992, authorities said.

Often described as a man “who looks just like anybody’s grandfather,” Loftus would enter banks, usually Bank of America branches in the east San Fernando Valley, Burbank, Glendale or San Gabriel, wearing a fishing hat and wire-rim glasses, authorities said.

He typically stood at the door of a bank and waited for a victim-- most often a restaurant employee depositing cash business receipts, police said. Loftus is suspected of at least 30 robberies that netted a total of $500,000, police said.

Loftus, who described himself as a self-employed telecommunications expert, was arrested in April, 1993, when a police stakeout at a Bank of America led to a high-speed car chase from Glendale to Hollywood.

At the time, police said they recovered an automatic pistol, police scanner, binoculars, several sets of stolen license plates, rubber gloves and several maps marked with bank locations in his car after the chase.

Loftus admitted the crimes to police, saying he committed them to keep his business afloat and to support his mother with whom he had lived for 10 years in Glendale.

His daughter told reporters when he was arrested in 1993 that she wasn’t surprised to hear of her father’s fate because of his history. In 1964, Loftus was arrested in Los Angeles in a series of so-called transistor-radio bank robberies, dating back to 1961, that netted more than $61,000.

His accomplices in the crime spree, who used transistor devices tuned to police frequencies, were two former University of Miami students who committed suicide in Key Biscayne after admitting their involvement during a phone call to FBI agents.

The dapper young Loftus pleaded guilty to the robberies and was sentenced to eight to 20 years on a series of charges that could have totaled 85 years in prison. The sentence was reduced because Loftus cooperated with authorities, according to his former lawyer, Maurice C. Inman Jr. of Beverly Hills.

Loftus was released in April, 1971, from the U. S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., Inman said.