By Mark Walker, The New York Times
Dressed in black pants, gloves, a ski mask and a white jacket, a man waddled into a Colorado bank on Jan. 2, 2024, and passed a handwritten note across the counter: “Stay calm and I am not going to hurt you.”
The teller, as trained, complied.
The man left with $385 in cash — and a nickname.
The FBI would later call him the Penguin Bandit, a moniker born from his peculiar gait: a side-to-side shuffle that conjured the image of a windup toy or perhaps, yes, a penguin.
But this was no isolated robbery.
The Penguin Bandit was one in a parade of serial offenders who would help propel Colorado to lead the nation in bank robberies, per capita, for three years starting in 2021, according to FBI statistics.
Brian Dunn, an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado, suggested that the COVID pandemic made it more acceptable for people to wear masks in public places, including banks.
Also, as an opioid crisis deepened in Colorado, a growing number of people turned to increasingly reckless ways of sustaining their addictions, including robbing banks, law enforcement officials said.
The rise in robberies came shortly after a surge in fentanyl overdoses, which doubled statewide from 2019 to 2020, according to the Colorado Health Institute, a public health policy research organization.
For some, the motive to rob banks may also have been from the thrill of the experience.
“Crimes that have a factor to them like a thrill or rush can cause a person to want to do it over and over again,” said Dr. Mary Ellen O’Toole, a former FBI profiler and director of the forensic science program at George Mason University. “It was exciting, it was thrilling, it was a rush, even though the payoff for bank robberies today is so small.”
The crimes followed a familiar pattern: Hand a teller a note, get some cash, walk out the door. But these weren’t masterminds — just desperate, familiar faces.
Many had criminal records. Some were on parole.
Faced with the surge in robberies, agents in the FBI’s Denver field office shifted strategies. Instead of tackling the robberies on a case-by-case basis, investigators focused on repeat offenders.
They assigned nicknames to the robbers that the public might remember.
There was the Powder Puff Bandit, who used makeup to cover his face tattoos; the Double Dipper Bandit, known for his pattern of robbing the same bank twice; and the Retro Bandit, because of his prescription flip-up glasses.
And of course, there was the Penguin Bandit.
The approach was simple: Memorable names tied to recognizable faces generated more tips from the public, officials said.
“We do that because we need the public’s help,” said Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of the FBI Denver field office. “With today’s surveillance footage, suspects try to hide their identities.”
On Jan. 23, 2024, a tip came to Denver Metro Crime Stoppers identifying the Penguin Bandit as Samuel Ruthstrom.
Investigators ran the name. A match popped up. He drove a vehicle seen at one of the robberies. He was on parole for felony burglary.
Investigators watched footage of Ruthstrom walking into a parole office and compared it with bank surveillance footage.
The shuffle and the sway were unmistakable. It was him.
“On account of how he walked in the bank and how he walked in this video — he had a particular waddle — that helped us develop probable cause and get him arrested,” Michalek said.
Jenifer Waller, CEO of the Colorado Bankers Association, said what set this crime wave apart wasn’t just the volume, it was the volatility.
“Some of these weren’t just note jobs,” Waller said. “They were more aggressive. More violent.”
In the summer of 2023, Flozell Beasley held up two banks, two credit unions and a taco shop in Denver, all while dressed like a construction worker, prosecutors said.
In each case, he used a fake gun to scare employees into handing over cash. He was caught in July 2023 after a teller slipped a tracker into the money. He was arrested 12 minutes later on a bus with the money and a fake gun.
As the list of stickups grew, so did the response. Some banks in Colorado installed buzz-in entry systems for public access. Others hired armed guards.
The FBI and prosecutors pushed their cases into federal court, where the consequences were steeper.
In Colorado, bank robbery isn’t typically a federal crime. It falls under the state’s broad robbery statute, unless federal prosecutors step in.
“Federal charges sent a message,” Dunn said. A robbery conviction could mean a decade in prison whereas state charges often meant probation.
Word has started to get around, he said.
By mid-2024, the crime wave was ebbing. The Powder Puff, the Retro and the Penguin bandits were all locked up.
Bank robberies and attempted robberies in Colorado peaked in 2021, with 191. Authorities said that, so far this year, they have investigated 16, and four people have been charged in federal court.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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