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Victor Vasquez at Hackensack bank holdup (FBI photo)
Union City police tracked Vasquez after he bungled an attempt rob a TD Bank branch off 43rd Street less than two hours after making off with $1,000 from the Guttenberg Savings and Loan off 68th Street on Dec. 14, 2010 investigators said. Both branches are on Bergenline Avenue.
In the car, police found makeup and a baseball cap that Vazquez used, as well as the $1,000.
FBI agents quickly determined that Vasquez also held up the Oritani Bank on Fairview Avenue in Fairview 10 days earlier and also robbed more than $10,000 from the Valley National Bank in Hackensack on Sept. 9.
The same weapon — the end of a blowtorch wrapped in a cloth — was used in Bergen but not in the Hudson County robberies, they said.
Investigators said he tucked it into the sleeve of his jacket.
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Vasquez served nearly 15 years for robbery after being sentenced in February 1989, records show.
He was behind the wheel of his red Ford Explorer — which witnesses reported seeing at the Fairview robbery — when police nabbed Vasquez at the corner of 51st Street and Kennedy Boulevard, not far from his 53rd Street home in West New York.
Witnesses at the Fairview holdup days earlier gave investigators extremely valuable information by remembering that the license plate on the 1990s SUV, with beige trim and push-bar grill guards, began with the letter “X” and ended in “5C.”
Oritani Bank, Fairview (GoogleMaps photo)U.S. District Judge Jose Linares also sentenced Vazquez to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay full restitution to the banks.
U.S. Attorney Paul S. Fishman credited the FBI, as well as the prosecutor’s officers from Bergen and Hudson, and the North Bergen, Union City, Hackensack and Fairview police departments. The case was presented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam N. Subervi.
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