Security Spotlight: New resources to catch thieves, counterfeit items update, and more! 

Windy City "Winners"

Super-sized AND cool...

Jeremy Evans, 30, of Carol Stream, IL will be remembered not only for his serial bank heists but also as having multiple monikers. The 5-foot-11, 230-pound man allegedly robbed at least 17 banks in 7 states with a combined take of more than $75,000. Evans multi-state crime spree began in July, 2012 when he robbed the community State Bank in Salem, Wisconsin and ended with his arrest in January after allegedly robbing the Old Second National Bank in Elgin, Illinois. He also hit banks in California, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and Virginia.

Evans earned the nickname "the Ray-Bandit" because he wore Ray-Ban sunglasses in the Midwest robberies, and was dubbed "the McBandit" when bank surveillance videos showed him putting his loot in a McDonald's paper bag at a heist in Southern California. Evans is being held without bond at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, charged with at least one count of felony bank robbery. Additional charges are pending due to the scope of the investigation spanning several states. It would be interesting to know if his fellow inmates have given him a new nickname.

Went out with a bang

Also in the windy city, 36-year-old Mickey Loniello, Jr was sentenced at the end of December to 19 months in prison on a robbery charge for his plot to rob a Chase Bank branch in Oak Park, IL. Turns out Loniello was looking at a lengthy prison term for drug charges in 2007 when he hatched a plan to rob the bank to finance his going-to-jail party. Enlisting the help of two co-conspirators, Loniello was unaware that one of his selected wingmen was an undercover FBI agent wearing a wire, recording all the details of the planned heist. The FBI even supplied the dummy .45 caliber handgun that Loniello planned to use. When he and his chosen accomplice arrived at the bank to execute the moronic plan, the feds were ready and waiting to apprehend them. Loniello was sentenced to a 19 month federal sentence, which has already been served. He was transferred to Cook County Jail - a no-party zone - for an unrelated pending drug case.

Check our Bank Robbery page for photos and information on the latest robbery suspects. There are 57 unknown bank bandits featured in our suspects gallery for January. Most bandits wear sunglasses or hats to disguise their appearance. Enforcing a no hats, hoods and sunglasses policy could help reduce the number of bandits who target your bank. Start off the new year with signs for all of your branches from the Banker Store.

To Catch a Thief

R.I.O.T.

As we read in the lead feature robbery story above, criminals don't always confine themselves to one region, or even state, but will cross county and state borders to commit their crimes of choice. A collaborative effort between law enforcement and private industry security professionals in Texas has combined the pursuit of justice with networking to form the only robbery association of its kind in the state - Robbery Investigators of Texas (R.I.O.T.) Although the group was originally started for Texas investigators, several other states are now participating. Check them out and get all the details at www.robberyinvestigatorsoftexas.org. If you are in the southwestern region, consider taking advantage of this valuable resource or starting one like it in your neck of the woods.

Roadmap to Robbers

What if you can pinpoint on a map every bank hit by bandits, view captured security camera images of the thieves, and see the type of weapons they used? No need to just imagine the possibility, now you can do it! As one of many new tech initiatives the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies are using in an attempt to leverage new tools both online and in the field to catch the bad guys, the FBI has launched a customized Google maps widget of unidentified bank robbery suspects on their website that provides images and location of different bank robbers. This information is available for local law enforcement, financial institutions and the public in an effort to encourage anybody with relevant information in identifying the thieves to leave tips for investigators. Bookmark this link https://bankrobbers.fgi.gov and share it with your branch security personnel and your peers. Networking and sharing information is an effective way to deter and apprehend bank robbers.

Threads of Interest

If you are looking for peer-to-peer discussions with other security officers, the public security forum is available for general topics about security. One discussion covers training for the new security officer.

Check out the thread on retention of security reports. Could this be an issue in one of your branches?

We also have a "private" security forum for discussion of more private, sensitive topics. The private security forum has discussions between security officers that include vendor products, the inadequate sentences for embezzlers and other criminals, debit card transactions, large deposits, email encryption, and more.

To comment in Bankers' Threads you must be a registered user. You can register here. If using your bank email account, you will be given access to the private forums. The Private area is a group of forums under the heading "Private - Financial Institution Personnel Only." The Private forums do not include access to Bankers Hotline or Compliance Action, premium content areas that require paid subscriptions to those respective publications.

If you are already registered for the Threads, but don't yet have access to the private forums, using your bank email address send a request for access to andyz@bankersonline.com. Please verify that you do not yet have Private access. Once your registration request is approved, you can access the Private Security forum here.

Alerts and Counterfeits

Alerts (Synopsis done 02-2013) If you have subscribed to the Security Spotlight for a few years you know we've often recapped the Alerts & Counterfeits issued by the regulatory agencies. These were potential losses waiting to happen that your institution should be on the lookout for. We have not provided this synopsis in quite some time, most notably because these numbers have been so low. Look at this table showing the number of items:

From 158 items reported in 2010 to just 13 in 2012 is a significant decline. Could it be that cybertheft is replacing traditional paper check fraud? Is this decline due to lack of reporting or has the number of fraudulent items actually decreased? We hope it is the latter and that it's a sign banks are sharing information so effectively that thieves are creating fewer fraudulent items. Join the discussion on this in the Private Plus FIs, Regulators and Law Enforcement forum.

First CrimeDex alerts for 2013

The New Year brought new alerts for BOL CrimeDex members. The Secret Service reached out in search of bank accounts or other information on suspects in a Treasury check investigation, and Tulsa police warned subscribers of counterfeit checks on a Tulsa business being negotiated in Utah. Those checks listed Zions Bank as the drawee, but the MICR line included information on the victim's Tulsa bank account. Pennsylvania police and the Secret Service asked for any information on suspects in a credit card fraud case involving 36 victims and a common point of purchase in Pennsylvania, followed by fraudulent card transactions in California. A California police department reached out for assistance in identifying a suspect who robbed a bank and fled in a stolen car. Finally, a Michigan credit union posted an alert about heavy circulation of counterfeit checks on a Dearborn business, all related to Craigslist "overpayment" scams across the country.

Keep up on the latest scams, crimes and other threats facing your bank and other businesses with a free subscription to BOL CrimeDex

Blogging on Facebook

On our BOL Facebook page, the items we blog about are not just news stories but are intended to be thought provoking and to question how these situations might be handled if they occurred at your bank. Take for example the robbery we posted about on January 2. In this case, the thief's weapon of choice wasn't a handgun or a shotgun, but a homemade flamethrower. What comes to mind when you imagine this unusual threat appearing in your branch lobby? Do your employees know where the fire extinguisher is? Would they be more focused on the potential fire hazard and safety of your customers and staff or on reporting the robbery? Or would effective communication take place for two people to divide these tasks and handle them simultaneously? Read our January 2 post for more on how to handle this scenario.

And in the spirit of training staff, it is hard enough to get a description of the suspect or suspects right after a robbery occurs. Do you think your tellers would recognize a robber a month after the robbery? Tellers at a TCF bank in Chicago did and, in doing so, prevented a second robbery. Get the details from our January 7 post.

Read about these topics and more on our Facebook page. Be sure to "like" the articles so we can continue to post more articles of interest to you!

We have updated several tools on BankersOnline for 2013. Although these new updates are not directly security related, take some time to look through this resource of free tools. In many cases, there is a good chance you wear more than just a security hat, or you might earn bonus points with a colleague by referring a tool that would be helpful to them. While you're there, take a look through all the available tools for any security-related items that may be of interest to you.

Have you presented your board with your annual security program report? Whether you've done this before or this is your first year, look at our "Annual Security Program Report - How to Prepare" tool provided by Dana Turner.

Did we mention all these Banker Tools are FREE?! You can find these and more at the BOL Banker Tools page.