When the teller isn’t scared, judge rules
well fuk, we might as well all just do it then.
A man who walked into a bank, gave a teller a note saying “This is a robbery” and then demanded money, took $600 cash from the teller, and left the bank with it, has been cleared of a robbery charge by a judge who ruled what he did is not, in fact, a robbery.
The judge found a bank robbery is only a bank robbery if the teller is scared, and in this case the teller felt something closer to sympathy or pity, because the hold-up note mentioned the man’s sick mother. What this man did, according to the new ruling, was the far less serious crime of theft under $5,000, to which he pleaded guilty.
“When someone walks into a bank and hands a teller a note demanding money, it is usually considered to be a robbery,” the judge wrote. “But in the unique circumstances of this case, it was just a theft.”
The teller had a “thick skin,” the judge found. “While others might have reasonably been frightened, she did not experience any fear at all… There was no robbery.”
It was 3:50 p.m. on Sept. 14, 2012, when Jorge Luis Oliveiros Ortega, then 22, walked into a bank in northwest Toronto. He was about 5’4″, 120 pounds, and wearing a grey Adidas jacket. He gave no indication he was armed.
As the teller was about to serve him, he stepped back, spoke in Spanish to someone on his cell phone, then he handed over the note, which read: “This is a robbery, give me the money, my mother is sick.”
but anywayyyy...
When is a bank robbery not a robbery? When the teller isn’t scared, judge rules | National Post
well fuk, we might as well all just do it then.
A man who walked into a bank, gave a teller a note saying “This is a robbery” and then demanded money, took $600 cash from the teller, and left the bank with it, has been cleared of a robbery charge by a judge who ruled what he did is not, in fact, a robbery.
The judge found a bank robbery is only a bank robbery if the teller is scared, and in this case the teller felt something closer to sympathy or pity, because the hold-up note mentioned the man’s sick mother. What this man did, according to the new ruling, was the far less serious crime of theft under $5,000, to which he pleaded guilty.
“When someone walks into a bank and hands a teller a note demanding money, it is usually considered to be a robbery,” the judge wrote. “But in the unique circumstances of this case, it was just a theft.”
The teller had a “thick skin,” the judge found. “While others might have reasonably been frightened, she did not experience any fear at all… There was no robbery.”
It was 3:50 p.m. on Sept. 14, 2012, when Jorge Luis Oliveiros Ortega, then 22, walked into a bank in northwest Toronto. He was about 5’4″, 120 pounds, and wearing a grey Adidas jacket. He gave no indication he was armed.
As the teller was about to serve him, he stepped back, spoke in Spanish to someone on his cell phone, then he handed over the note, which read: “This is a robbery, give me the money, my mother is sick.”
but anywayyyy...
When is a bank robbery not a robbery? When the teller isn’t scared, judge rules | National Post
