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(l. to r.) Investors Bank, Clifton; Valley National, North Bergen (also photo on end); Banco Popular, North Bergen
The FBI hasn’t yet identified the man, who is under guard by Bergen County Sheriff’s officers at Hackensack University Medical Center.
However, police have connected him to the robbery of the Investors Savings Bank at 10 Botany Village Square in Clifton on March 26, 2010.
Federal authorities already have said they believe the backpack-wearing robber in that holdup is the same who robbed held up the Valley National Bank at 8901 Kennedy Boulevard in North Bergen just two weeks earlier and the Banco Popular at 8501 Kennedy Boulevard on April 2 of last year.
He’s in his late 40s to early 50s, about 5-foot-7, and may be Mexican or Central American, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned.
In at least two of the robberies, he was carrying an easily distinguishable light blue/dark blue backpack and wearing dark-rimmed eyeglasses with thick lenses, the FBI said.
After threatening employees with a gun, he fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, the FBI said. Although he didn’t have the backpack in the Botany Village holdup, he was carrying the same gun — and clearly fit the same description as the North Bergen robber.
Federal authorities have no publicly disclosed evidence of him showing up again — until Thursday, when he robbed the Chase Bank branch on Union Avenue in Rutherford, taking a hostage outside with him, before he was shot and wounded by a borough police officer. SEE: Rutherford bank robber eyed in at least three other holdups
ALSO SEE: Federal authorities finally caught up to Augusto G. Perez, who was arrested by the FBI this morning and charged with holding up a Weehawken bank and taking money from a customer and a teller there at gunpoint in late February. He had been on the run since. CLICK HERE
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