Geezer Bandit: Bank of America #11?
Maybe his rent was due on July 1….
Or maybe he needed a little extra cash for the July 4th holiday….
The Geezer Bandit suspect struck again on June 24 at the Bank of America in Temecula. He presented a note with his demand for cash and carried a leather case with a small caliber pistol that he threatened to use. (The fact that it was Bank of American should please at least one female Bay Area disk jockey, and probably a few twisted people in high-tech customer support groups. 
)
The FBI believes that the suspect is responsible for robbing 10 banks in San Diego County and this latest one in Riverside County, within the last year. I blogged earlier about bank #9 and bank #10. The Geezer Bandit has at least two “fan” pages on Facebook. He has carried a weapon in at least two of the robberies, and authorities said that he should be considered dangerous. No kidding….. I listen closely to people with pistols, regardless of caliber.
CNN quotes a spokesperson for the FBI:
Although the Geezer Bandit is described as between 60 and 70 years of age, there are suggestions that he may be wearing a mask to make him appear older than he is. He is approximately 6 feet, 190 pounds, of average build, wears prescription eyeglasses and various hats and caps, including a blue baseball cap with a script “P” on the front.
“They’d say it was ‘a movement!’”
I (facetiously) wrote about the Geezer Bandit as demonstrating a “career path” for victims of widespread age discrimination in high tech. NOW, I am really starting to wonder!
This mustachioed gray-haired man is in his 50s or 60s and held up a bank in San Gabriel, California on June 26, threatening to shoot the teller if she did not move fast. He claimed to have a partner and a gun and demanded cash in $100, $50, and $20 denominations. Authorities believe the mustache-wearing man used the same technique in two earlier California bank robberies, one in January in Alhambra and one in Rosemead in March.
Although criminals like the Geezer Bandit and the Golden Years Bandit should not be glamorized, the same phenomenon happened during the Great Depression, in the Midwest. Probably one of the most famous cases was John Dillinger, a bank robber and murderer in the early 1930s. I first learned of John Dillinger as a child, when my parents took us to the FBI Building in Washington, D.C. I also remember my father describing a highway interchange in Ohio, near the Pennsylvania line, as the one-time location of a roadhouse frequented by Al Capone and other gangsters.
In this Great Recession, we are seeing some parallels to the Great Depression. According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, bankruptcy filings climbed 14% during the first half of 2010. Filings totaled 770,117 through June, as compared with 675,351 during the same period last year.
Meanwhile, “American” companies continue to offshore American jobs, to China, to India, and face it, to anywhere with low-paid nonunion workers. Harvard Business School told them they could, and business foolishly believed them! I heard on the TV news a couple of days ago that GM (“government motors,” you remember) sold more cars in China than in the United States during the first six months of 2010!
Why not? The Chinese are among those with some of the American jobs.
It looks like the equal-opportunity field of bank robbery may be filling up fast in California. I will stay alert for other job opportunities for you victims of offshoring and age discrimination.
(Note added December 24, 2010: In the wake of other robberies, authorities are investigating whether the Geezer Bandit was wearing a very life-like mask!)
-Bill at
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