At 1:30 p.m. on Friday, November 29, 1983, a man the FBI called the Yankee Bandit walked into the lobby of a Bank of America in the Melrose district of Los Angeles and stood in line. When he got to the teller window, the well-dressed man politely informed the woman on the other side of the counter that he had a gun and would she please hand over the cash. After tucking $1,740 into a briefcase, he apologized for any trouble, thanked her, and left.
Thirty minutes later, The Yankee was sixteen blocks west at the City National Bank in the Fairfax district going through the exact same routine and walking out with $2,349. Still moving west, he hit a Security Pacific Bank in Century City 45 minutes later, but bailed out with no money when the teller starts freaking out on him. Undaunted, he walked one block over and cordially robbed the First Interstate Bank there for $2,505.
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When Bank of America reported a few days ago that unemployment benefits fraud in California could total $2 billion, a number of questions came to mind.
Is this the biggest heist in history, at least in California? Well, that’s what the Sacramento County district attorney said, and I can’t think of anything that tops it.
Has the California Employment Development Department now surpassed the Department of Motor Vehicles in the ranks of scandalous state government incompetence? It certainly appears that way.
And if California prison inmates were smart enough to swindle an estimated $400 million in state benefits, even as thousands who were thrown out of work by the pandemic still can’t get their money, shouldn’t we hire the inmates to run the agency and lock up the officials who allowed it to become a national laughingstock?