Alleged Bank Robber Is Red in the Face -- and Everywhere Else

Updating your stupid-criminal-tricks file, I submit the case of the 35-year-old alleged bank robber who wound up in the red in Santa Barbara over the weekend.

The suspect, driven to the bank by an unwitting neighbor, went inside and, pretending he had a gun, allegedly made off with $9,000. He also made off with one item he wasn’t aware of: a dye pack.

It exploded as he walked back to his waiting neighbor’s car. The neighbor took one look at the red mess and told him he wasn’t getting in.

So, Associated Press reported, the suspect “was forced to flee on foot, covered in dye and trailing red bills.” The neighbor, meanwhile, alerted police who arrested the suspected bank robber during his extremely slow getaway.

While we’re on the subject: When he was the FBI’s L.A. Bank Squad coordinator, William Rehder gave wanted suspects nicknames “to keep them straight in my head, names based on some memorable aspect of their appearance or M.O.” Some examples mentioned in his book “Where the Money Is -- True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World,” co-written by Gordon Dillow:

* The Mummy Bandit -- wrapped surgical gauze around his head.

* The Michael Jackson Bandit -- wore one glove.

* The Marx Brothers Bandits -- wore wigs, glasses and fake mustaches (and actually were brothers).

* The Dr. Death Bandit -- wore a skeleton mask.

* The Miss Piggy Bandit -- short woman who “weighed about 300 pounds.”

* The Miss America Bandit -- attractive robber (who was a former bank clerk).

* The Benihana Bandit -- “yelled and waved a butcher knife” during his robberies.

* The Chevy Chase Bandit -- a clumsy guy who “tripped over a doormat and fell facedown in the bank lobby (he turned out to be an attorney).”

Thanks for the warning! Steve and Sue Dutcher of Fullerton assume the sign they spotted in Newport pertained to a salon -- and was not a parking warning or an invitation to masochists (see photo).

Not sure there’s a market for this: Grady Miller of West Hollywood noticed a movie that’s apparently about drive-through dairies for two-wheeled vehicles (see photo).

“Duh!” Warnings Department: You wouldn’t think that an airport would have to advise roller-bladers to stay off its runway (see photo). But, as David L. DuMond of Westminster discovered, the airport in the town of Hazen, N.D., doesn’t get much traffic and the usually vacant strip evidently is a tempting arena for the blade set.

miscelLAny: In “Where the Money Is,” ex-FBI man Rehder mentions that at least one suspect griped about his nickname: the Clearasil Bandit. A robber with a case of acne, he threatened a lawsuit, claiming that the nickname “exposed him to ridicule and humiliation from prison guards and inmates after he went to the joint.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.