Robberies

Less than a year after filing for bankruptcy, a low-level security technician at Soboba Casino in Riverside County forced his way into the casino's vaults at gunpoint, hogtied four employees and disappeared with perhaps more than $1 million in cash Thursday, authorities said. Riverside County sheriff's officials identified the suspect as Rolando L. Ramos, 25, of Hemet, who worked at the San Jacinto-area casino for two years maintaining the casino's video surveillance cameras.

When Edwin S. Porter made the film “The Great Train Robbery” in 1903, he counted on the audience to connect scenes that were discontinuous in time and space. Dashiell Manley asks us to do much the same, creating three related installations at three different locations: LAXART, Redling Fine Art and a storage locker a few blocks away (accessible via Redling). The works, which are all different versions of each other, were inspired by Porter's innovative film that defined not only the western genre but cinematic storytelling as we know it. Manley dissected the film's third scene three times, translating its action into turn-of-the-century shorthand characters and painting them onto large canvases.

Los Angeles has put some teeth in an ordinance that made it illegal to steal bottles, cans and other items from the city's curbside recycling bins. The City Council voted Wednesday to spend $64,000 to step up enforcement of the city's anti-scavenging ordinance, earmarking $15,000 for a police crackdown in the West San Fernando Valley and setting aside $49,000 for a possible expansion of the police patrols citywide.

When federal officials recently confirmed the existence of a massive National Security Agency program that has been collecting Americans' phone data for years, they argued it was needed to fight terrorism. But that acknowledgment has opened potentially seismic rifts in the nation's legal system, allowing defendants to argue that the government is holding a massive trove of evidence that is necessary to their cases - the same kind of evidence that, when it's collected by police, is commonly turned over to defendants.

The home of a prominent former subprime lender was the target of a home invasion robbery in a gated Newport Beach community Tuesday night, an attack that left three people injured and police searching for two suspects. Nine people were inside Daniel Sadek's home when four men armed with handguns forced their way into the residence in the upscale Pelican Ridge community of Newport Coast, demanding cash and jewelry, police said. A fifth suspect, officers said, waited outside during the robbery.

The bank heist crew didn't carry demand notes or confront tellers. The robbers' tools of choice included power saws, hand-held radios and ladders. They allegedly walked away with at least $6 million by cutting through the rooftops of San Gabriel Valley banks under the cover of darkness, according to law enforcement authorities. Once inside, the men used power tools to break into concrete vaults, then fled with bags of cash. FOR THE RECORD: Bank heists: An article in the April 11 LATExtra section about a series of nighttime heists at San Gabriel Valley banks described the crimes as robberies and the criminals as robbers.

Los Angeles Police Department officials said Tuesday they had arrested two juvenile gang members in connection with two robberies in the Silver Lake area. The arrests were made Saturday by undercover officers tracking local gang members believed to be responsible for the robberies, said LAPD Capt. Bill Murphy. Two youths, ages 15 and 16, were taken into custody on suspicion of armed robbery in two robberies near Hyperion and Rowena avenues. -- ruben.vives@latimes.com

A Lomita woman asleep in her home on 248th Street, and a convenience store clerk several blocks away, were both robbed at knifepoint this weekend. Authorities believe that the robberies were related. Lomita sheriff's deputies said the robber escaped with $1,520 in cash, $1,370 of it from the first victim, Rebecca Magdaleno, 33. Magdaleno was awakened at 10:15 p.m.

A Studio City man will be arraigned today in South Bay Municipal Court on charges that he robbed 23 fast-food businesses, including 12 in the South Bay, in a three-month spree that ended with his capture last month in East Los Angeles. Deputy Dist. Atty. Julie Sulman said Gary Williams, 33, was arrested and charged with robbery after a passer-by allegedly saw him hold up a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet March 16. On Wednesday, the district attorney's office filed 28 additional counts in South Bay Municipal Court for robberies that netted between $100 and $4,500 each, Sulman said.

Two of three suspects arrested this week in connection with a string of recent armed robberies are believed to be responsible for the execution-style slaying of an MTV music coordinator in a Mid-Wilshire neighborhood over the weekend, Los Angeles police said Thursday. Jabaar Vincent Thomas, 26, and Destiny Young, 29, both of Los Angeles, were arrested in connection with the shot-gun slaying Gabriel Aron Ben-Meir, 30, police said. Richard Edward Anderson, 33, a resident of the San Fernando Valley, was also arrested on suspicion robbery.

It seem like the perfect crime: Masked men snatch an assistant bank manager in her garage, strap a bomb to her and force the woman to rob her own East Los Angeles bank of $565,500. But now authorities allege that one of three men charged with last fall's movie-like holdup is none other than the assistant bank manager's boyfriend. According to a federal indictment unsealed Monday, Reyes "Ray" Vega arranged for the woman, whose name has not been released, to strap on a fake bomb so she would appear to be a hostage - setting the stage for him to rob the bank in September.

It wasn't like the movies. Seven of the police officer's bullets hit the robber. An eighth hit a hostage, Andrea Rebello. Both were killed, and a standoff was over. The repercussions, however, had just begun. The death of the 21-year-old Hofstra University student after a botched home robbery early Friday morning has shaken the Long Island community of Hempstead, N.Y. As a university community prepared to say its final goodbyes to Rebello, whose funeral is set for Wednesday, Nassau County police officials have faced a raft of questions over whether the unnamed officer made a criminal mistake or was simply forced into an impossible dilemma.

Several men -- including a friend of a bank manager who was kidnapped and strapped with explosives as part of a bizarre bank robbery in East L.A. last fall -- have been indicted in connection with the crimes, several law enforcement sources said. Ray Vega, 33, of Arizona is among several suspects taken into custody after an indictment by a federal grand jury in connection with the Sept. 5 incident. Vega had previously been arrested and released from custody after posting $100,000 bail.

Two high-profile robberies at this year's Cannes Film Festival have attracted a lot of attention, but they're the hardly the first such heists (on screen, or off). First, a stash of Chopard jewelry reportedly valued at more than $1 million was taken Thursday from a hotel shuite. Then, powerful China Film Froup executive Zhang Qiang canceled a news conference appearance set for Monday after his rented apartment was apparently burglarized. “This film festival is not worth mentioning!

An Orange County mother and her 26-year-old son were sentenced Friday after they were convicted of luring a man to a motel from a nightclub, where they robbed and killed him in 2008, prosecutors said. Leticia Carrasco, 52, was sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison and her son, Noel Carrasco, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, according to a statement from the Orange County district attorney's office. A jury found Noel Carrasco guilty last month of one felony count of special circumstances murder in the commission of a robbery and one felony count of second-degree robbery.

A 78-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of bank robbery Monday, minutes after he left a bank pulling a suitcase on wheels, the FBI and San Diego police said. But authorities say that Dale E. Jenkins is not considered a suspect in the Geezer Bandit bank robberies in which 16 banks in San Diego County and other locations were robbed between August 2009 and December 2011. The Geezer Bandit has been described as a white male between the age of 60 and 70, although suspicions remain that the bandit is a younger man wearing a theatrical mask and makeup.

Irvine police said Saturday that they had arrested a man suspected of robbing six banks since November, including five in Orange County. Lt. Rick Handfield said Paul Kjelland, 30, of Costa Mesa was arrested about 5 p.m. Friday as he appeared to be preparing to rob an East West Bank branch on Culver Drive. Kjelland had a note in his pocket indicating his plans, the lieutenant said. Kjelland is suspected in robberies in Irvine and Topeka, Kan., among other cities.

Three men and a woman were arrested Wednesday after a man and his dog were shot and wounded during a home-invasion robbery in the Hollywood Hills, police said. Three of the suspects forced their way into a home in the 8200 block of Mannix Drive about 1:40 a.m. while the fourth waited in a getaway car, according to a Los Angeles Police Department statement. They ordered the victim to open a safe and took large quantities of cash, the statement said. It was not immediately clear what prompted the suspects to open fire.

A 57-year-old man was arrested Saturday on suspicion of bank robbery after being spotted leaving the bank in a cab, San Diego police said. Andrew Geils was arrested minutes after a robbery at a Citibank branch in downtown San Diego. Witnesses reported to police that Geils left the bank and hailed a cab. With the assistance of a police helicopter, the cab was spotted heading southbound on California 125. It was then stopped by patrol cars. Geils was arrested on suspicion of the Citibank robbery and two other bank robberies, police said.

LONDON - Thirty-one people have been arrested in a three-country sweep tied to a spectacular $50-million diamond heist at a Belgian airport in February, officials said Wednesday. More than 250 officers with the Belgian federal police and the country's special branches fanned out across Brussels early Wednesday, conducting 40 house searches and arresting 24 suspects. A day earlier, six people in Switzerland were taken into custody, as was one in France who authorities believe was among the masked thieves who took the gems from a jet on the tarmac at Brussels Airport.