Worth Noting

The pen is mightier than both the gun and the sword, apparently. In Michigan, 9 banks have been robbed by people wielding...notes. And apparently, they're not all grammatically correct. Shocking!

A serious note: Paper, not gun, is bank robber's weapon of choiceTHE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Sunday, April 13, 2008
By Bryn Mickle

GENESEE COUNTY - It's been happening a lot lately: A man walks into a bank with a hold-up note and leaves with a bag full of money.

No weapon. Not even the threat of one. Just a note.

Although experts say most bank robbers get caught and risk life in prison for a few hundred bucks, that message is lost on some crooks who see banks as easy money.

But the idea that someone can rob anything with just a note is a head scratcher for John Dombrowski, who owns a battery store just down the road from the Security Federal Credit Union branch in Burton, where a robber showing a note got $1,600 last month.

"I would take it, correct it for punctuation and laugh at it," said Dombrowski.

This reminds us of the San Francisco bank robber who filled out a deposit slip demanding that a teller "put the muny in a bag." He apparently worried that someone had seen him write his note, so he took it to the bank across the street.

The teller there, confident she was not dealing with a genius, told him she couldn't fill his request because it was written on another bank's deposit slip. The would-be robber returned to the first bank, where he was arrested by police summoned by the savvy teller.

Then last year in San Diego, we had the English Major Bandit, so named by the FBI for his appalling heist notes. He was caught and convicted, and now will have the rest of his life to study grammar...in the prison library.