Saturday, August 8, 2009

'Inner tube robber' sent up-river for 6 years

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MONROE, Wash. -- A man who stole thousands from an armored car in an elaborate scheme and then made his getaway on an innertube down Woods Creek was sentenced to six years in prison Monday.

Anthony Curcio, 28, will also face three years of supervised release.

The FBI says Curcio planned the robbery over a year. On Sept. 30, he sprayed an armored car guard in the face with pepper spray outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe. He made off with $400,000, then hopped on a yellow inner tube and escaped down the creek.

Agents cracked the case when they learned about two weeks before the robbery, a homeless man called 911 to report that he found a can of Mace, a wig and a two-way radio behind a trash bin nearby. When a man came to retrieve the items, the homeless man wrote down the license plate number of his car. The license plate was registered to Curcio's wife.

DNA was collected from evidence gathered at the scene, and on Oct. 28, the Washington State Patrol crime lab sent Monroe police a DNA report that matched Anthony Curcio's.

He was arrested a few days later in a new Range Rover following a shopping spree at an outlet mall.

A few days before the robbery, Curcio placed an advertisement on Craigslist for laborers to work a landscape job in the areas near the Bank of America.

Several workers showed up in work clothes, as requested by the advertisement, that were similar to what the robber was seen wearing, to confuse police searching for the suspect.

Court documents in the case said that Curcio was having financial troubles and began studying the armored car deliveries at the branch, as well as the best route of escape.

He manufactured a disguise with clothing that could be easily removed, and even strung a cable in a nearby creek so that he could use an inflatable raft and pull himself down the creek away from the scene of the robbery.

Agents recovered about $220,000 upon Curcio's arrest.

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