Police: Burglar 'fishes' for money in Santa Rosa bank deposit box, gets caught

A man and woman were arrested early Wednesday after Santa Rosa police found the man using a sticky mouse trap to fish for money from a downtown bank’s night deposit box and observed the woman nearby, acting as a lookout, police said.

The unusual theft style has cropped up numerous times in Santa Rosa of late with 15 such burglaries reported since November, including several in the past two weeks. Around the county, law enforcement officials reported at least 11 more cases, two each in Sonoma, Windsor, Petaluma, Healdsburg and Cloverdale, and one in Larkfield.

“It’s called fishing,” said Petaluma Sgt. Paul Gilman.

Santa Rosa officers Wednesday were called at about 6 a.m. to the Exchange Bank when a security guard reported a man acting suspicious outside of the Fourth Street bank, Santa Rosa Sgt. Josh Ludtke said.

As an officer drove up to the bank, the suspect started to walk away and wouldn’t cooperate with police, who took him into custody. Still dangling into the box was a burglary device.

“He was in the act of trying to steal some deposits out of the night box at Fourth and Mendocino,” said Ludtke, who supervises property crime investigations.

The man outside the bank, Jose Luis Lara, 33, was arrested on suspicion of burglary, having burglary tools and resisting arrest. In a car nearby was Paige Curtis-Thompson, 26, who was using a walkie-talkie to communicate with the man, Ludtke said. She also was arrested on suspicion of burglary charges.

Inside the car, officers found more glue traps, burglary devices and other items that linked the pair to recent thefts, including stolen mail, the sergeant said. He described the two as Santa Rosa transients.

Exchange Bank vice president Brad Hunter described the losses stemming from a total of four thefts over about two weeks as “nominal.”

He said checks were damaged as the suspect tried to fish items from a narrow slot but he didn’t believe much money was stolen. The activity was recorded by surveillance cameras and was being monitored by bank security, Hunter said.

“I don’t think this guy was the sharpest tool in the shed,” Hunter said. “He exposed himself a great deal for what I don’t think was really any gain. He was not very sophisticated.”

In the future, he said the bank might switch to a key-lock night deposit box but no decisions have been made.

In Petaluma, two recent bank burglaries appear to have involved the same tactic of using the glue traps. Gilman said he’s seen the method crop up occasionally over the years, sometimes at apartment complexes as a way to try and pull items, such as checks, from managers’ drop boxes.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Raasch said his detectives have looked into at least five such cases, including one that occurred at about 2:10 a.m. Tuesday at the Exchange Bank branch in Larkfield.

Raasch said surveillance tape at that branch compared to suspect Lara, showed the same man in the same clothing. A suspected burglary charge was added to Lara’s arrest record from the Larkfield crime.

He said detectives will be comparing the man to surveillance video in the other four cases they have.

While police have learned of more than two dozen cases of late, others may not have yet been discovered.

A bank doesn’t always realize right away when such a crime has been committed. Some of the cases have come to light after bank customers reported their deposits weren’t showing up in their accounts. Surveillance tapes then revealed what was going on.

A few of the crimes came to light the next morning when bank employees checking the night deposit boxes found part or all of a sticky trap - indicating the burglar lost hold of their device. That was the case in at least one of the Petaluma cases, Gilman said. “They didn’t get anything. The contraption broke off.”

Ludtke called the crime inventive and said it involves more than a loss of money; it also included stolen checks. “That leads to the threat of ID theft, forgery and a whole other myriad of property crimes that result from getting people’s information,” he said.

Lara was being held in the Sonoma County Jail on Wednesday afternoon in lieu of $150,000 bail.

Staff Writer Paul Payne contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter ?@rossmannreport.