By Thomas Tracy
Here’s one thief who knows a thing or two about banks. That’s because he worked for one. Officials announced this week that a man arrested earlier this month for allegedly robbing a Midwood Washington Mutual Savings Bank was employed at a JP Morgan Chase branch at the corner of East 65th Street and Avenue U in Mill Basin. Investigators said that 30-year-old Moise Verneau of the 30 block of Paerdegat 11th Street was arraigned on $10,000 bail for allegedly passing a threatening note at the Washington Mutual Savings Bank near the corner of Coney Island Avenue and Avenue J on January 4. Detectives apprehended Verneau after a series of mishaps that proved, they say, that the Canarsie resident was a first-timer. “We got a full confession from him,” said one source close to the case. “He had some money problems so he thought he would rob a bank. But the weird part is that he worked at another bank.” Officials said that Verneau allegedly entered the Washington Mutual at around 11 a.m. on January 4 and then threatened a teller, telling her repeatedly to give him money because he had a gun and he would shoot her, according to a complaint filed with the Kings County District Attorney’s office. The savvy Washington Mutual employee handed over about $1,000 in cash as well as a dye pack, which is designed to explode a few seconds after it passes a sensor near the front door. Verneau allegedly fled the bank and was angling toward his car, which was parked around the corner from the bank, when the next thing he heard was the dye pack exploding. He then found himself bathed in paint standing in a cloud of tear gas. Police said that Verneau allegedly ducked down an alley to ditch his stained clothes, ultimately shucking them off in the back of an area restaurant. But, with the back door opened, workers at the restaurant started to be overcome by the tear gas, sources said. When workers went to investigate the noxious odor, they spotted Verneau allegedly running down the alley to his getaway car – a 2002 Denali sports utility vehicle. One of the workers jotted down the license plate number and handed it over to investigators when they arrived. Cops identified Verneau as the bank robber early in their investigation, but did not take him into custody until January 8, charging him with robbery, menacing, petit larceny and grand larceny. Police identified Verneau as a “personal banker” for Chase. Sources said he was employed at Chase right up until the day of his arrest, when members of Brooklyn’s Major Case Squad pulled him out of the branch and took him into custody. Calls to the Mill Basin branch as well as JP Morgan Chase’s executives for comment were not returned as this paper went to press.
