PORTLAND, Ore. -- The FBI calls him the Fantasia Bandit for allegedly robbing the Fantasy Adult store on W. Broadway twice. But on Tuesday the armed robber was fingered for the fourth Hollywood-area bank heist in three weeks, according to FBI spokesperson Beth Anne Steele.
The MBank branch at 3636 NE Broadway was hit just before 2 p.m., Steele said, less than two hours after an association of Oregon banks known as FIST slapped a $5,000 bounty on the man's head.
It was the tenth robbery Fantasia Bandit was suspected in since Sept. 27.
On Halloween, the suspect allegedly threatened to kill a bank teller at the Hollywood Wells Fargo, not a half-mile from Tuesday's target, according to the feds.
One week earlier, the FBI and Portland Police named him the primary suspect in another Wells Fargo robbery, this one in North Portland at Denver St. and Interstate Ave.
Four other banks across town, including branches of US Bank, Key Bank, Bank of the West and NW Resource Federal Credit Union, and a video poker deli heist were all credited to Fantasia.
Fantasia was described by witnesses as a white, slightly overweight man of average height. He was thought to be somewhere between 35 and 45 years old.
Fantasia always wears a baseball hat and once wore a sweatshirt adorned with CCCP. The acronym stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the former Soviet Union, in the Cyrillic alphabet.
The $5,000 bounty comes after Crime Stoppers offered $1,000 for the Fantasia Bandit's arrest. All tips are anonymous, according to authorities.
Federal and state police caught another headline-grabbing robber, the so-called River Rat Bandit, after a four-month crime spree stretching from Portland to Spokane. The River Rat also had garnered a bounty from the Oregon Financial Institutions Security Task Force, or FIST.
Anyone with info on the Fantasia Bandit or any of the recent robberies was asked to contact the FBI or Portland Police.
Tips can be left at (503) 823-HELP (4357) or at the Crime Stoppers website.
