For County’s Bank Robbers, It’s Business as Usual

Some of them used fake bombs, bad wigs and guns to get what they wanted, but not much made this year’s batch of bank robbers any different from previous years, officials said.

So far this year, there have been 48 bank robberies in Ventura County, about even with last year and slightly lower than the average of 55 over the last 10 years.

“This year’s pretty normal,” said Supervising Agent Gary Auer of the Ventura office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The all-time high for Ventura County bank robberies in the last decade was 97 in 1992, Auer said.

Robbers have shown some limited ingenuity in technique and disguise, authorities said, picking up such monikers as “the bad wig bandit,” the “bandaged bandit” and “the typed-note bandits” No. 1 and No. 2.

Local robbers have used fake bombs to get tellers to hand over the cash, and one man used a bicycle for a getaway after robbing a bank.

Although there have been four holdups in the last two weeks, officials say it is a myth that bank robberies increase around the holidays.

“No one is out there knocking over banks to buy Christmas presents for their kids,” Auer said. “They’re robbing banks to pay for drug habits, for the most part.”

County robberies are typically committed by local residents. Of the 22 people arrested and prosecuted so far this year, 15 were local men.

The local robbers also seem to keep pretty tight hours, avoiding Saturdays and for some reason picking Tuesdays to do most of their robbing, officials said.

For the second year in a row, the city of Ventura had the largest number of bank holdups with 13, while Oxnard had nine and Thousand Oaks had eight.

The FBI has obtained either convictions or federal indictments in 35 of this year’s bank robberies. Five of those allegedly were committed by Johnny Valdosola, who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury.

In August, a man formerly of Albania was caught by Ventura police officers after cutting into the roof of an automated teller machine and trying to grind off the hinges of a vault door inside.

The man, 28-year-old Adrian Simoni, is believed to be a member of a criminal syndicate of Eastern European immigrants that may be responsible for as many as 40 similar-type robberies throughout California and Nevada, said FBI Agent Larry Dick.

Simoni had the help of at least one other man whom police saw running from the area. But officials believe that several others were involved in the foiled heist, using police scanners, radios and silent power tools for the break-in.

“That was a very sophisticated operation,” Dick said.

Simoni recently pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles, taking full responsibility for the crime, Dick said.

Although robbers routinely threaten tellers and brandish weapons, no one in Ventura County has been seriously injured during a robbery, officials said.

But the toll on tellers is clear, Dick said.

Many tellers have a difficult time going back to work, often needing counseling sessions.

“In some cases the banks are spending more money after the fact,” Dick said.

In June, four young men terrorized employees and customers at a First Interstate Bank in Newbury Park with an assault-style rifle and pepper spray. The incident ended after a high-speed chase that resulted in all four suspects--two of them juveniles--being arrested.

But it was the second takeover-style robbery this year at the bank, and it was too much for a few of the employees, Dick said.

“I’m not sure some of them will ever be back at work,” he said.

But experience has also made bank employees more savvy.

In Port Hueneme last week, a sharp employee at one bank that robbers have held up two times this year almost foiled another robbery.

Noticing two men who appeared to be casing the California Federal Bank on West Channel Islands Boulevard, the teller phoned the police, said Det. Sgt. Jerry Beck of the Port Hueneme Police Department.

Apparently getting a bad feeling, the two men went to the Home Savings Bank on North Ventura Road nearby, Beck said.

Police stopped there to warn employees about the two men just as the bank robbers were leaving with stolen money, he said. The police stopped one man and ordered him to the ground, but he ran into heavy traffic on Ventura Road and after a long foot chase he eluded police, Beck said. The other robber also got away.

“We’re not usually that close,” he said. “But these tellers have become so sharp. They’re sensitized to how these guys operate.”

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Bank Robberies

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Year Total Total solved 1986 71 60 1987 60 52 1988 31 27 1989 76 57 1990 43 35 1991 52 41 1992 97 85 1993 48 41 1994 25 15 1995 50 41 1996* 48 35

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* 1996 figures are to date.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation