UPDATED at conclusion: The suspect is a retired cop!:] The FBI is seeking public assistance to find a serial bank robber who has struck five times in Orange County since March 20.
Agents are calling the suspect “The Snowbird Bandit” due to his hair color, gray or white; age range, 55-60; and stature, 5-foot-9 to six-feet and 180 to 200 pounds.
The robber is certainly bold. On July 21, he returned to his May 22 victim: a First Citizens Bank in Rancho Santa Margarita.
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Other robberies include a U.S. Bank in Ladera Ranch on July 6; a Wells Fargo in Mission Viejo on June 11; and a Cal Bank N Trust in Monarch Beach.
The Bank Robbery Apprehension Team (BRAT) comprised of FBI agents and Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies reports that the suspect displayed a revolver while demanding cash during “some of the robberies.”
Agents have not disclosed the size of the loot.
BRAT is asking anyone with information to contact the FBI at 310-477-6565.
UPDATE, July 23: Sheriff's deputy Jeff Hallock reports that yesterday afternoon BRAT captured the alleged Snowbird bandit, 70-year-old Randolph Bruce Adair of Rancho Santa Margarita. According to Hallock, the suspect's family members saw media reports and contacted authorities. Adair, a retired Los Angeles Police Department cop, is locked inside the Orange County Jail and could be freed pending trial if he can pay a $205,000 bail. CBS News reports that during a 21-year LAPD career, Adair participated in the arrest of Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
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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.