It seemed like banking as usual both times the well-dressed customer walked into two Loop lending institutions.
”He carried a dark brown briefcase. He looked like a regular businessman going in there,” said FBI spokesman Robert Long. ”And then he went ahead and robbed the bank.”
Authorities figure that between the two scores-last week at First Nationwide Bank, 99 W. Washington St., and Monday at First National Bank of Chicago, 39 S. Wabash Ave.-the robber with the businessman`s touch made off with a total of about $4,000.
Not bad for two afternoons worth of work. Indeed, at first glance, robbing banks may appear to be a lucrative, albeit dangerous, way to make a living.
But look again. The relatively meager haul of most bank robberies, combined with the likelihood of getting caught, makes it an especially risky business.
C. Brett Swoape discovered that last week. He allegedly stole an estimated $12,000 from a bank in Roselle, according to authorities, but was shot by police and captured soon after, following a chase.
So did Jeffrey Erickson. In the eight bank robberies he was charged with committing, Erickson managed to take in more than $180,000. But he didn`t get any large sums of money until his fourth robbery five months into his spree, when he got $35,600 from the NBD Skokie Bank, according to prosecutors.
And by the time the money started rolling in, Erickson`s ”Bearded Bandit” profile was such that investigators had figured out a pattern of stolen cars used in the robberies. In December, they staked out a stolen Mazda and arrested Erickson when he climbed into it.
His wife, Jill, then led police on a chase that ended with her being shot to death. Erickson also paid the ultimate price for his spree last month when he killed a U.S. marshal and a security guard and then turned the weapon on himself in the basement of the federal court building in Chicago where he was on trial.
Big payoffs like those that eventually came to Erickson are by far the exception. The typical haul from most robberies is between $1,500 and $3,000, authorities say, so it can take several successful heists just to rise above the poverty level.
And most offenders are unable to pull off a string of robberies. Nationally, three out of every four such crimes are solved, and the solution rate is even better in the Chicago area, where four of every five end in arrest, according to the FBI.
”Those aren`t favorable odds,” said Long. ”And they`re getting worse as preventative measures at banks get better.”
Even so, the temptation remains. Last year, 11,439 people nationwide were involved in 9,810 robberies, burglaries or larcenies of banks or savings and loans, according to FBI figures.
In 747 of those cases, no money was successfully taken, but nearly $67 million in cash, securities and other valuables were stolen in the remaining incidents.
Vault robberies, which occurred only 365 times, skew the average amounts taken. That`s because they yield much higher sums, such as the more than $100,000 taken from a South Side bank last February by a lone robber.
Vaults are rarely struck because ”the majority of (robbers) are just trying to make a quick score, and vaults aren`t that easy,” Long said. ”To get into (them) takes some preplanning, and you have to have some knowledge of how the thing works.”
Still, the questions remain: What motivates people to rob banks, and do the successful thieves have anything in common?
Law-enforcement experts say many bank robbers-about three out of five, according to Long-use drugs and feed their habit with money they get from the heists.
That apparently was the case with the ”Zombie Bandit,” who robbed as many as 18 banks and thrifts in the Midwest, including five in Illinois, according to authorities.
His name came from his deadpan expression, mechanical moves and bulging eyes-a demeanor that belied his intense spree, which netted well over $65,000 in less than three months.
Alan David Hurwitz, who has been charged in two of the robberies and is suspected in many of the others, had been a prominent and well-respected figure in Michigan education circles, former associates said.
But ”he was living a skid-row existence when he was arrested,” and he appeared to be suffering from substance abuse, said Hank Glaspie, FBI spokesman for Michigan.
Authorities said Hurwitz`s wife told them he was giving much of the money from his alleged bank robberies to drug addicts he met on the street.
Hurwitz`s background demonstrates another thing experts say about bank robbers: They can come from all walks of life.
”I`ve found them all the way from people whose fathers are presidents of industries to drug addicts unemployed on the streets,” said Steven Cox, an associate professor of criminal justice at Illinois State University who specializes in offender counseling.
Regardless of their backgrounds, though, a trait many bank robbers share is that they rarely plan ahead and often blunder.
”They`re not our most intellectual criminals. Most of them don`t sit down well in advance (to figure out) what they`re going to do,” Long said.
Long recalls the man who tried to rob a downtown bank with that classic bank-robbery weapon, a brick.
”The guard was standing right there and grabbed him,” Long said.
Then there was the fellow who robbed a Loop bank last December on the same day President Bush was visiting the Board of Trade. He fled outdoors into a contingent of Chicago police officers who were part of the beefed-up security for the president`s visit.
”These people are really sorry characters, most of them,” Long said.
Those who succeed have usually checked out their targets and know the hours of operation and other basics.”If there were anything” that successful robbers all do, Long said, ”it would be a little advance planning.”
Erickson apparently was one such robber. He used a system of stolen cars and often carried a police scanner to pull off his heists, authorities have said.
Like your average robber, he started small. He allegedly stole $2,970 in his first robbery, at First Nationwide Bank in Wilmette, according to the indictment filed against him. He didn`t even pull out a weapon.
By the time of his later heists, though, he was threatening to kill people and demanding that employees get into the bank vaults, prosecutors said.
”He learned that threats of violence were successful in getting people to give him money,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Victoria Peters, the lead prosecutor in the Erickson case. ”He began asking for specific sums of money instead of just telling people to empty their drawers.
”In the last one, he asked for $100,000. . . . (But) it was a timed vault; they couldn`t get into it.”
