A man who couldn’t pass a fraudulent check at the Belleville branch of Chase bank, grabbed some cash from a nearby cashier’s window and ran off at about 3 p.m. last Thursday.
He was taken into custody in Romulus on Monday and is being held on a federal warrant for a parole violation.
Belleville Police Chief Gene Taylor said Sean Lamont Goodman, 43, of Van Buren Township was arrested by the Absconder Recovery Unit of the State of Michigan.
The FBI will be handling Goodman’s prosecution because he was wanted on federal warrants, Chief Taylor said.
Chief Taylor said the incident actually was a botched attempt to pass a fraudulent check over $500 in value.
Chief Taylor said the man obviously needed the money badly, for the “frustration factor took over” after he couldn’t get money from the check.
He saw someone getting cash from a teller, so he announced that he was armed, grabbed an undisclosed amount of cash, and ran from the bank, heading northwest. A weapon was not seen, but only implied.
Since the money hadn’t left the cashier’s custody, the customer lost nothing, Chief Taylor said.
They had the name and address of the suspect and also had his fraudulent check and his picture on bank video.
After he ran from the bank, local police officers were unable to find him despite an exhaustive search, so Chief Taylor suggests he may have gotten in a vehicle and driven off.
Various witnesses told police officers from Belleville and Van Buren Township that the man ran: under the bridge, behind some bushes, out Denton Road, out Belleville Road, and out Quirk Road.
People driving into Belleville during that time saw police searching on and around the bridge.
Chief Taylor said the FBI, which usually is involved in all bank incidents, lately has had its resources redirected to homeland security matters and only gets involved in very serious bank crimes.
But in this case, the FBI has taken over because there already was a warrant for his arrest on other charges.
Local residents reported that when they went to withdraw funds that afternoon, the bank was locked and police and employees inside waved them away without explanation.
Some said they were a little disconcerted because that afternoon the stock market made a 1,000 point dive before righting itself somewhat and they wondered if the closed bank was related.
One customer said, “I think the bank was closed because of Greece,” referring to the financial problems in that country that allegedly influenced the U.S. stock market.