A suspect in a bank robbery in Banciao District (板橋) on Monday was arrested hours later, New Taipei City police announced yesterday.
A man wearing a motorcycle helmet and face mask pointed a gun at an E.Sun Bank clerk on Monday afternoon before jumping over the counter to grab five bundles of bills, and then dashing out the door and driving off on a motorcycle, police said.
He got away with NT$500,000 (US16,209), they said.
An eyewitness said the robbery took less than a minute.
After taking eyewitness statements, police reviewed security camera footage to try to track down the robber.
A suspect surnamed Yeh (葉) was nabbed outside a convenience store in Jhonghe District (中和) at 7:50pm, police said.
“When we made the arrest, Yeh had NT$170,000 on him, but said he had wired the rest of the money to pay off his debts,” Captain Lin Tzu-hsiang (林子翔) of the criminal investigation section at the Banciao Police Precinct said.
Officers took Yeh, 41, back to his residence, where they found a fake handgun that might have been used in the robbery, along with clothing, gloves and a helmet that matched what the robber had worn, Lin said.
Police identified Yeh based on footage from street surveillance cameras.
They first spotted him walking around the bank building on Monday morning, and then were later able to follow the robbery suspect’s motorcycle along roads toward an area near Yeh’s home in Jhonghe.
Yeh reportedly admitted to committing the robbery, allegedly telling police that he had gone to a local post office to wire NT$330,000 to friends and an underground moneylender afterwards, as he had been under pressure for the past few weeks to pay back money that he had borrowed from them after losing a lot of money in an investment in a mobile phone business.
He had borrowed the money to provide for his wife and two children, but the moneylender’s high interest rate meant his debt had grown to more than NT$1 million this week.
Prosecutors said that they would indict Yeh on charges of aggravated robbery.
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