If the FBI is right, Orange County's Scott Robert Skallerud will soon be heading to prison for a sixth trip.
This month, agents arrested Skallerud for committing an $807, June 7, 2012, robbery of a Wells Fargo Bank in Santa Ana and the June 16 attempted robbery of that city's Main Street Bank–a heist foiled when the teller walked away.
According to court records, the FBI pieced together their case by using six-pack photographic lineups for eyewitnesses, surveillance video from neighboring business establishments and the purported confession by Skallerud when confronted by agents.
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Skallerud–who allegedly handed tellers terse handwritten notes–wore sunglasses, a tank top and a baseball cap during the crimes, according to an FBI report reviewed by the Weekly.
Prosecutors inside the Orange County District Attorney's Office have previously convicted Skallerud of burglary, grand theft and false personation (2010); theft (2008); possession of a deadly weapon, possession of illegal narcotics and false personation (2003); illegal narcotics possession (1998); and grand theft (1993).
On Jan. 17, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Block granted the wish of federal prosecutors that Skallerud be denied bail, but records at the Santa Ana Jail, where federal prisoners are usually housed, don't reflect his presence.
Skallerud, born in 1969, is represented by a federal public defender.
A January 31 preliminary hearing has been scheduled inside the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
