American Notes Crime

All he wanted, insists Dan Dana Sabine, 35, was a loan to buy some new clothes. So last week he walked into the Maine National Bank in Portland and asked a teller, Sandra Lee Cashman, 21, for some money. Although she did not see a weapon, Cashman was convinced that Sabine, who appeared "real scraggly looking," was a bank robber. Frightened, she handed over three bundles of $20 bills, totaling $1,500. Overcome with his good fortune, Sabine told the teller that he loved her, and set off to shop.

Sabine had spent nearly $500 on a new coat, a fresh suit of clothes and some towels when an announcement came over a department-store loudspeaker that a nearby bank had been robbed. Deciding that it was unsafe to walk around with so much cash, Sabine walked over to a second downtown bank, People's Heritage. There, he began filling out forms to open a checking account. An alert teller, who had heard about the heist two blocks away, took one look at Sabine and, despite his new coat, called the police. Said a bank official, he "was not our usual kind of customer." Just 59 minutes after he walked out of Maine National, Sabine was arrested for bank robbery.