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Shaneema Waldron, 28, of Montclair, pointed a knife at an employee headed into the Investor’s Savings Bank around 7:30 a.m. the morning of July 13, authorities said.
As it turns out, the 24-year-old teller who was accosted turned out to be the replacement for Waldon, who’d been fired earlier.
“Get inside,” Waldon said in a foreign accent, FBI Special Agent Bryan Travers told CLIFFVIEWPILOT.COM.
The new employee signaled to a co-worker already inside not to open the door, then ran off, he said.
The would-be robber was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt pulled tight over her face, a black scarf or veil, green pants and leather gloves. But employees at the Clifton Avenue bank had a good idea whom police should look for after reviewing the “Bandit Tracker” photos, captured by a surveillance camera.
In Waldon’s apartment, investigators said they found the exact same clothing seen in the video and still shots.
The FBI asks that anyone with information about bank robberies call the bureau:
973-792-3000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 973-792-3000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 973-792-3000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skype_highlighting. Also, be sure to check: BanditTracker NorthEast for up-to-the-minute information and photos of area bank robberies.
Waldon’s motive resembled those of other female stickup artists: She was in financial trouble — behind on the rent and he kid’s tuition payments — after being canned by the very same bank. She also apparently didn’t expect to get caught.
“They need diapers for the baby — that kind of thing,” said Rosemary Erickson, a South Dakota forensic sociologist and security consultant.
Waldon is officially charged with first degree robbery, making terroristic threats and weapons charges. She’s being held in the Passaic County Jail.
Authorities say the ranks of bank-robbing women are rising in step with the overall number of holdups.
From Tampa to San Diego to St. Louis, authorities within just the past few weeks have issued bulletins bearing photos of women robbing banks, hoping someone will recognize the bandits.
And they usually are: FBI stats show that three of every four bank robbers are caught. The bureau makes the crimes a priority, and the U.S. government makes the sentences stiff: up to 25 years, in some instances.
That time is served, too: There’s no parole in the federal prison system.
Talk about equal opportunity.
The 6 to 10 percent of all bank robbers who are women believe they’re committing a “fairly safe kind of crime to commit in terms of personal risk,” said Robert McCrie, a professor of security management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.
Some get nicknames, which experts say help keep their images in the public eye — from the glamorous “Starlet Bandit” who robbed a California bank to Atlanta’s giggling “Barbie Bandits” to the “Cell Phone Bandit,” who hit four banks in Virginia, all while talking on her cell phone, several years ago.
Others, meanwhile, break the stereotype: Two Colorado women are accused of bursting into a bank there, pointing guns, before fleeing with a bag of cash. They were later arrested.
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