By Alberto Luis Rodriguez

I’ve been called a “sly fox” many times by the authorities and by local journalists. My bank robbing career has been expansive and glamorous, but as of late I’ve gotten older and slower. My round head is turning white, and my long legs are getting heavier. So let’s call it what it is—the twilight of life.

At this point I’m more of a silver fox than a sly fox. But I could still drop knowledge. So here it goes.

Of course I must begin with a disclaimer. I DON’T ENCOURAGE BANK ROBBING under any circumstances whatsoever (emphasis added). It’s a dangerous line of work. It’s very unethical. It’s bad for the system and for the soul. Your sense of right and wrong gets all mixed up, and that alone could end up ruining your life. That said, here in the West we do value knowledge for its own sake. So in a sense, I have a duty to put pen to paper. And, also, there is a right and wrong way of doing things, even when one is decisively doing the wrong thing. Such things also must be examined.

If you are robbing banks consistently it helps to have an automotive paint shop in a secret location not too far from your residence.

The police will expect you to set up shop in a different county, so it makes more sense to not go too far. But, also, don’t stay too close either, for obvious reasons. Finding that middle distance in your target area’s geography is a matter of good judgment. And good judgment happens to be the bread and butter of successful anything, not just bank robbing.

If you rob a bank with a getaway vehicle and keep the car, repaint it right away.

Not adhering to this simple rule could land you in jail faster than you can say silver fox. Even if you feel that you have absolutely evaded the authorities in almost every other respect, still—paint away. Many talented thieves have gotten caught because of a bout of laziness. Also, the best getaway car is not the fastest car, it’s whatever is most plentiful in your city. The more the merrier. No fancy sports cars please, and definitely no tinted windows—unless you live in Rio de Janeiro. The best automotive paint sprayer in the market right now, optimized for speed, is the DevilCoat 3000.

But let me tell you what is far better than having a reliable getaway car—having multiple gateway cars or vehicles. Yes, it takes money to make money. Whoever told you anything different lied to you. For me the dirt bike was essential because my methodology consisted of me ending up tucked away in the woods. But I also relied heavily on the box-truck method. If you want to hide in plain sight, get yourself a box truck. Is like an elegant slide of hands. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten away from the cops because they were looking for me at the other side of town, when the whole time I was right there, close to ground zero. Of course, do customize your truck accordingly, so you can lock it from the inside, and then you’ll be able to hide in plain sight.

I mentioned the woods: Any bank robbing operation worth its salt should revolve around an underground bunker in the woods.

This is not just a mere opinion. It’s a point that has been proven by the length of my career. This is absolutely the best path towards personal sustainability. The underground bunker is your last line of defense when the highways get flooded with lights and the helicopters come out to play. When this happens—head to the woods.

I prefer a shipping container eight to ten feet under the ground to account for erosion, with a ventilation system and an emergency exit. If you happen to install two emergency exits, instead of one, you won’t be overdoing it. Now, I do understand that burying a shipping container in a secret location in the woods constitutes a herculean effort. But that is exactly the point. There is a reason mediocre thieves get caught with surprising regularity. They are incapable of putting out this sort of effort.

Be very careful when you ditch your car to make a run for it.

Always wear gloves. Don’t leave nothing behind. Don’t even touch anything that you don’t have to touch. Be a minimalist in actions, in equipment, in tactics, even in thought patterns. Strive towards performative elegance—like a seasoned dancer at the MET. Know that New Jersey cops are not likely to shoot you in your back, unless you give them a good reason. So don’t give them a good reason. Also, most New Jersey cops will not follow you into the woods without special equipment—like dogs and rifles. Use this insight to your advantage.

The question then becomes: How do I escape the acute nose of a K9 canine?

If you are ambitious, and you are willing to do your own research, you can come up with your own scent-blocking formula. But there are a few companies out there that are manufacturing espionage grade scent-blockers. A really good Montana based company has the science down-pack to the point that they can approximate the scent of an entire region—like the collective flora and fauna of the Northeast—or the cumulative breeze under the Appalachian canopy—or the rubbish infused sea breeze of the Eastern Seaboard. In a pinch, when you have a pack of bloodhounds on your tail, this becomes a real life-saver.

There are certain things to do if you want to avoid a heavy police response. And this to me is the heart of the matter. Remember, you are fighting a system, not just an isolated bank. Banks work together to protect their common interest, and they have the backing of the federal governments. They also have innumerable local agencies at their beck and call. When you put all that together it’s an ocean’s worth of resources at their disposal. This means you either bring your absolute A-game every freaking time, or you will eventually end up in the slammer—lock, stock, & barrel.

But most importantly, and this is the part that mediocre thieves seemed unable to get into their thick skulls—you have to know your limitations. And once you understand those limitations, you have to throw out the hubris out the window and abide by such limitations long term, not just occasionally. This is the only way. This is why I only robbed banks during the cold, winter months when the days were short. I imposed this limit on myself because, like I said, my strategy was to flee deep into the woods. In the bush, with the help of night vision goggles, I could disappear like a ghost. Because of this self imposed policy I mostly stayed away from cities and major urban centers. This debilitating constraint, however, paid off in the long run. Out there in the exurbs, where banks are surprisingly wealthy, small police departments were forced to cover large tracts of land looking for me. This was the basis for my survivability.

But the crowning jewel of my self-discipline was the fact that I only robbed banks on Friday evenings, right before closing time. Maybe I was a little superstitious about this specification, but I became convinced that at the end of the work week, and at the end of the day, when police departments were changing shifts and bank managers were tripping over each other to go home, people of all walks of life were less inclined to chase a sly fox into the woods.

So if I could give you one rule of thumb, this would be it—don’t over do it. If you do and become a nuisance to the system—the empire will strike back—and the minute that you get on their radar, and they get a handful of rocket-scientists, FBI types, in a room working on your case, you’re basically cooked meat. Put a fork in it. So do yourself a favor and don’t put yourself in that position.

Know your topography. Know your trails, your rivers, your lakes, your hills.  Go on an ever increasing number of dry runs. Develop a working list of sticking points. Absolutely always work alone. NEVER trust another criminal. Stay informed. Think critically. Take copious notes. Keep records. Do your homework. Take your job seriously—like any law student would. Keep an eye out for your own blind spots. You don’t know what you don’t know; and what you don’t know is what ends up killing you. So learn it before it kills you.

This means hours of research, combing through websites, books, articles, manuals, textbooks, police reports, true-crime novels, law journals, and technology blogs. Canvass the dark web for relevant information and insight. Most importantly—stay awake—mentally. These are the defining elements of a winner: presence of mind, preparation, situational awareness, and a can-do attitude. Most folks that fail do so because they get mentally sloppy. The ramifications follow—they get caught.

Be quick on your feet, figuratively and literally. Get strong and fast with calisthenics, kettlebells, and plyometrics. The combination is lethal. It helps to be a practitioner of parkour and track & field. I learned this the hard way when I had to outrun a cop that wasn’t your average donut eating cop. He was more of a cross-country superstar and he was gaining on me quickly. At one point I thought I was toast, but then a small yorkie came out of nowhere and tripped him up. That day I learned my lesson. As good as you are, you could always get  better.

Inside the bank I usually went HAM. That was my method but it doesn’t have to be yours. I never took to passing notes. But the principle remains the same whatever method you use. If you cannot successfully overpower the managers and tellers psychologically, most likely things will swing the other way pretty quickly. So it’s important to have a good intuition for human psychology, and an inner sense of rage. But if you lack this inner forcefulness, then raw movement might be your thing, which is a scary thing inside a bank. Imagine if someone enters a bank with a pump of adrenaline that breeds of violence and starts jumping over the furniture and dividers like an acrobat. How are you going to react? Most likely you will first go into a squat. Then into a military prone position. You might even end up with your head inside a stiff philly-shell. And this is precisely the time to go and get the money and skedaddle.

Did I tell you that I was getting old? I won’t tell you my name for obvious reasons. But I’ve given you enough clues. Many news articles have been written about my accomplishments. But suffice to say that I am a top grossing bank robber, most likely the top bank robber in the history of the state of New Jersey, and maybe even the entire continental US. According to the  private blog of a retired police chief of a major US city, the FBI is in the habit of skewing the numbers of pertinent crimes in order to maintain the illusion of perpetual law and order. But that’s another conversation for another day.

Over the years I’ve extracted a few million dollars from the system. Most thieves can’t even topple a single million. But despite this dedication I don’t see myself as a hardcore criminal. If I did I don’t think I would have lasted this long. There is something about outright wickedness that breeds self-sabotage. In every other aspect of life I’m a law abiding citizen. I pay my taxes. I don’t cheat on my wife. I cut my grass on the weekends. I never did get around to beating my kids. I even give to charity.  It’s a clean life every which way, except e for the bank robbing.

I developed my Robin Hood mentality after my mother died. That tragedy became a core memory of mine. My happy childhood was interrupted by the greed of the banks. My single mother worked harder than anyone I know. She bought us a house in the suburbs of New Jersey with central air, a mud room, and a garden in the back where she raised us lovingly among an abundance of smiles and laughter, until she fell ill. The outcome was almost predictable. It always is. Who can work that hard, for that long, and not get sick?

When she got sick the banks were waiting on the sidelines like vouchers. Losing the house made her even sicker. She died on Palm Sunday.

Banks and large corporations compute human frailty right into their malevolent equations. Inequality is a big American problem that defies any quick fix. Revolutions are fought over smaller matters. At least slavery was a cut and dry issue. For this one we are going to need  someone bigger and badder (and more wise) than Lincoln himself. Such a system that rewards the strong at the expense of the weak in the end is a system that gnaws at itself in self-hatred. The Occupy Wall Street movement last summer was just the tip of that iceberg.

But my own exploits and consistency have permitted me to shove my family right into the ranks of the upper-middle-class. My children have grown up in a ferry-tale setting—in a picturesque Jersey farm with all-American Ralph Lauren vibes—geese, ducks, chickens, ponds, a handful of cattle (for food security), dogs and cats that get along wonderfully, lots of birds, and bees, and flower beds everywhere. We own several real-estate holdings in Easton, Bethlehem, and Allentown and we have a little more than a million dollars growing steadily in a Vanguard Index Fund. From a financial perspective we are in the generational wealth building stage. Our principal is as stiff as an oak tree, ever growing, even when we go regularly on expensive family vacations and routinely eat in top Philly restaurants. Overall life is magnificent, except for the debilitating panic attacks.

Yes, I do get panic attacks. They have gotten so bad that everything has come into question. Like, what’s the point of acquiring wealth without the corresponding peace of mind to enjoy such wealth?

I know for sure that these ailments have to do with my nefarious secret life. I don’t need a shrink to tell me that. But at the same time I might need a shrink just to stay mentally solvent. It sounds like a laughable problem to some, but to me it’s a problem that has bite. How could I have such internal disarray in the midst of such physical prosperity?

Then something happened that undid my wheel and threw me off the tried and true path. My wife started to go to church again. She grew up in church but she reconverted in a stadium event of Greg Laurie. I called it “hogwash” from the get-go, but she insisted that it was the most important day in her life, which I found a little offensive, but that’s another feud for another day.

I started to do my own research in order to invalidate her tenets. But it was easier said than done. What I found I couldn’t quickly dismiss: a solid history, serious archaeology,  comprehensive theology, a larger than life central character worthy of Christmas carols, words that make you shiver, and an eschatological framework that explains the purpose of the human race. But the worst point that I had to disprove was the most personal—the fact that a persistent pain in my wife’s shoulder had been supernaturally healed. And my wife is not the type to tell tall tales.

I started attending church with her not because I believed this fairytail nonsense but because we had an ancient family bylaw that forced the family to stay together.  But either way the church services weren’t all that bad. The music was modern. Not that Gregorian chanting that I half expect. And the pastor’s sermons were… what’s the word? … fervent.  Sometimes they were even feverish. His doctrines were useful. I could see how some poor soul that was standing on the fence between righteousness  and wickedness could be inspired to do good works by such rhetoric. But I considered myself morally enlightened—in a machiavellian sense. So I was for sure past this guy’s earnestness. But I did enjoy his spectacle of faith, for the same reasons that I enjoyed sunsets. It was refreshing. But I still considered him a delusional hype-man—a trained and blind fabulist.

But one day, on the Lord’s day, his rhetorical whirlwind got to me. He impressed me with quotes of Jesus to such an extent (“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” and “For nothing is a secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”) that I started to break into a cold sweat. That afternoon I almost became a Christian.

Around the same time my wife began to press me about giving to charity. The church services had softened me up. I consented to it because what was the point of hoarding everything and not giving back to the community? Especially to single mothers in need that could use a little help. Our kids were adults, and they were more adjusted than we could ever be, so we subscribed to an organization that helped young single mothers. I guess this was my way of doing a little penance, and a little remembering. The panic attacks died down considerably, but ironically, I was still salivating for the next big bank hit.

But things really went off the rails when my wife got into a car accident. I got the call while I was feeding the geese. I rushed to the hospital. On the way there I made a deal with God. “Lord, please, if she makes it, if you allow her to make it, I’ll stop all my nonsense. I promise.”

Thankfully my wife survived the incident and she thrived through rehabilitation. Eventually we were out of the woods, medically speaking, and we went back to normal life. But then, as sure as the sun comes out in the morning, my old cravings returned. Cravings of beating the system, craving of making money in the process of beating the system. I didn’t intend to keep my promise to God because it was a promise that had been extracted under extreme duress.  But then something unexpected happened. When I went to prep for my next bank hit somewhere in  the northern regions of Sussex county I found out that I no longer had a taste for criminality. My palette had been altered, and I suddenly had an immense distaste for my former way of life. So I took this opportunity to walk away from the lifestyle completely.

I started spending more time with my wife at the farm. She taught me water painting, and how to make superior biochar. We became personally involved in a philanthropy that provided new cars to single mothers in need. This work wasn’t as rapturous as robbing banks, but it was deeply satisfying. Altogether, life would have ended on a high note, had it not been for some random kids from the sticks that found the exhaust pipe of my secret bunker.

They got into the bunker and found the guns. The police were called and they found the treasure trove of a bank robber: gold ingots, cash, fake IDs, a variety of face masks, a pair of military grade night-vision goggles, and an array of maps. The FBI was called in and they found my prints everywhere in that bunker.

Interestingly enough they rolled up on me in Time Square when my wife and I were exiting a Broadway musical and heading to a Wolfgang Puck restaurant. Talk about shock and awe. It was every bit the shock and awe treatment that I had been given out so liberally for most of my adult life.

I went to prison. The evidence against me was pretty solid. But I got very lucky with a liberal judge that maybe had the same opinion as me—that the banks were in fact predatory.

She dismissed a lot of the circumstantial evidence that put me at the scene of dozens of bank robberies all over the state of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. What could have easily been a 30 to 40 year sentence turned into a 3 ½ year sentence with good behavior. The judge even praised my reformed ways, the fact that I showed contrition, the fact that I was a productive member of society, that I gave to charity, that I volunteered my time to the community. And another thing that worked for me was the fact that my “last rodeo,” as she called it, had been “quite some time ago.”

THE END

Alberto Luis Rodriguez is a new writer based in Brooklyn, New York. He has a degree from CUNY and his work is forthcoming in INK Pantry.

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