Button Up Bandit, others hitting banks at rapid pace

FBI Special Agent Larry Carr has watched the Button Up Bandit — a bank robber named for his penchant for button-up shirts — grow bolder and more flamboyant with each job he pulls off.

Button Up used to wear conservative shirts and seemed to want to blend into the crowd, often waiting in long lines for his turn at the teller's counter, Carr said. Though he is suspected of robbing his first bank in September, his robbery spree really took off in mid-March, with almost-weekly heists since then, Carr said.

Button Up is a suspect in 10 of the 115 bank robberies in the state so far this year.

If the present pace keeps up, Carr said, 2006 could be a record year for bank robberies in Washington, exceeding the previous record of 357 set in 1998.

Carr said there is always "a big bump" in the frequency of bank robberies starting in November and extending through the holidays. In 2005, for instance, there were 221 bank robberies in the state, with 96 of them — or 43 percent — committed in the last months of the year, he said.

On Tuesday, Button Up is suspected of his 10th local robbery, at a Washington Mutual branch in the University District that was empty of customers at the time, said Carr. Button Up now seems not to care about drawing attention to himself, Carr said, noting that during Tuesday's robbery, he was wearing a brightly colored disco shirt, orange tinted sunglasses and a moustache the teller said she knew was fake because she could see glue on the robber's face.

"She got a bad feeling when he walked in with that fake moustache. ... She knew she was going to be robbed," said Carr, the coordinator of the five-member Puget Sound Violent Crimes Task Force, an FBI-led team of agents and detectives from the Seattle Police Department and King County Sheriff's Office who spend the bulk of their time tracking down bank robbers.

Button Up and four other "unsubs" — FBI shorthand for "unknown subjects" — together are thought to be responsible for more than 30 robberies, nearly one-third of the bank robberies committed in Washington since January.

California leads the nation in the number of annual bank robberies, but Washington — the country's 14th-most populated state — is second only to Maryland in the number of bank robberies per 100,000 people, Carr said. Eighty percent of the state's bank robberies are committed in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, and within the three-county area, 60 percent of bank heists happen "right here in King County," Carr said from the FBI's Seattle field office on the corner of Third Avenue and Spring Street.

More than 300 mug shots of Seattle-area bank robbers arrested since the late 1990s are pinned to a corkboard in Carr's office. He pointed out several suspects whose faces appear more than once among the rows of black and white photos — proof, he said, that many bank robbers will rob again.

Sean Peoples' face appears twice, the first time in 2001. He served almost two years in prison for bank robbery and was arrested again last year, accused of robbing the same Capitol Hill bank three times in four days, Carr said.

Peoples, 27, began serving a new prison sentence for the 2005 robberies in September at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla and is scheduled for release in 2012, according to a state Department of Corrections records clerk.

It used to be that bank robbers who pulled "note jobs" — that is, they passed a note to a teller, demanding cash — "got a smack on the hand" and typically spent only a few months in jail, Carr said.

The Legislature has since increased penalties for bank robberies. As of June 2002, any robbery of a financial institution is automatically brings a charge of first-degree robbery, a crime that typically carries a three- to five-year prison sentence, said Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.

Carr suspects that the region's recent spike in bank robberies is at least partially tied to the fact that many of the first bank robbers convicted under the 2002 law have served their sentences and are now being released from prison.

"Bank robbery is not a crime of passion; it's a crime of economics," Carr said. "Every bank robber I've interviewed has tried at some point to go straight" after being released from prison. Most find some menial employment, but because of addictions — either to drugs or gambling — they soon return to the thrill of scoring easy cash, he said.

With few exceptions, Puget Sound bank robbers pass notes to tellers; while many will imply that they have a weapon, most aren't armed, Carr said. "They're not jumping the counter and taking the vault for the big score," he said, noting that most bank robbers here get away with $1,000 to $5,000.

While bank robbery is rarely a violent crime, tellers are often traumatized and sometimes quit their jobs after a robbery.

Most of the robbers are transients or homeless and live in cheap hotel rooms, their cars or on the streets, Carr said. When the money runs out, they hit another bank and the cycle continues, he said.

"Banks and law enforcement — we're all pounding our heads against the same wall," Carr said. "It's frustrating," he said, because most robberies are committed quickly and little evidence is left behind. More often than not, Carr and the task-force detectives must wait for a bank robber to make a mistake.

They're hoping Button Up will screw up so they can finally attach a name to his face and add him to their wall of known suspects.

"These are the guys who are really killing us right now," Carr said of Button Up and the four other men who've been given catchy bank-robber handles because their real names aren't known.

• Nomad, a dark-haired man, probably in his 30s, dresses like a construction worker. He is suspected of robbing 10 banks in three states during a 10-week spree that suddenly stopped after a note job in Tacoma April 19.

• Euro, so named for his Eastern European accent, is big and swarthy and may wear a toupee. He is wanted for six area heists, three of them on the Eastside.

• Upscale, who has a fondness for business attire and sports a mustache and trim little beard, is wanted for six bank robberies from Lynwood to Auburn.

• Punxsutawney Phil — or the Groundhog Day Bandit — is suspected of a trio of robberies at the same Renton branch. His nicknames refer to the movie "Groundhog Day," in which a character wakes up to the same day over and over.

"These guys, when they start having a lot of success, they start getting cocky. The more success they have, the more bold they get — it's just human nature," Carr said. "It's fortunate for us because that's when they start making their mistakes."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com