Most heists by repeat robbers

Keith Paul

Thursday, Dec. 28, 2000 | 10:45 a.m.

A few robbers are probably responsible for almost a third of the Las Vegas Valley's record-setting 168 bank robberies this year, the FBI says.

Suspects are in custody for many of them, said Special Agent Daron Borst, spokesman for the FBI Las Vegas office, but they have not been indicted in all of the robberies that agents believe they may be responsible for.

The number of robberies recorded in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 eclipsed the 145 bank robberies committed the previous year, which had set the previous record. During a week and a half in late September and early October, a string of robberies hit 16 banks, including six in one day, Borst said.

Once bank robbers have success, they will keep hitting banks until they get caught. One man arrested in October is suspected of pulling 20 bank jobs before he was caught.

"A lot of times bank robbery is a crime of desperation to feed some kind of addiction, whether it's gambling, drugs or something else," Borst said. "They will keep going until someone stops them."

Nationwide the FBI recorded 6,749 bank robberies in fiscal year 2000, with 2,450 of those holdups attributed to serial robbers.

FBI officials do not point to a specific cause for the increase in the Las Vegas Valley. There could be a number of factors, they said, such as the transient nature of the town with people driving in from other places, pulling a robbery and then moving on.

Even on the day in October when there were six bank robberies, it appeared robbers had various levels of skill, but no common reason to the crimes.

On one end of the spectrum, two local men were accused of robbing two banks and stealing a construction company truck as a getaway vehicle and then driving it to their apartment and parking it out front. That was enough of a tipoff that Metro Police surrounded the apartment and took the men into custody.

On the other, a bank in Henderson was robbed as an employee was opening the door to go in. The robber, covered by a ski mask and gloves, tied up the workers and made off with an undisclosed amount of cash.