Misguided Criminal Uses Own Current Account Cheques to Rob Bank

In what’s set to go down as one of the easiest to solve police cases of all time, a man has been arrested by police in Ocala, Florida, on two counts of bank robbery. The man, now known to be 33 year old Patrick Shane Johnson, was detained on Monday after robbing two Bank of America branches within 6 hours.

However, the comedic twist to this rather ‘ordinary’ story is that he misguidedly wrote the demand notes on cheques from his personal current account, giving the police access to his name, address and financial history in one fell swoop.

While you can kind of see where he was going with this one, perhaps he thought that using the bank’s own cheques wouldn’t raise suspicion from bystanders, you get the impression that he didn’t really think his plan through.

According to Ocala police spokeswoman, Sergeant Andy Scroble, he pulled his first ‘job’ at 9.45am on Monday morning.

Having handed the teller a bank cheque that informed her he was carrying a firearm (a 0.45 calibre pistol to be precise) and requesting an as yet undisclosed sum, he left the scene in a compact, golden car.

In the meantime, using the CCTV images captured by the bank coupled with details gleaned from the cheque, police were able to confirm Johnson as the suspect and issue a warrant for his arrest long before he embarked on his second robbery of the day.

When, at 3.36pm, he handed an almost identical note to a teller in his second Bank of America hold up, police were already on his trail.

However, as if a gold car wasn't eye catching enough, he was then seen fleeing the scene in a ‘Dan the Taxi Man’ cab, the license number of which was noted down by bank employees.

Police were then easily able to track down the location of this somewhat conspicuous getaway car and he was soon found sitting in the back seat, much to the surprise of the taxi driver who didn’t have a clue he was harbouring a fugitive.

While, on his arrest, Johnson was found to have a firearm with him, fortunately nobody was hurt in this misguided crime spree.