MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — A prolific bank robber from Frederick, Maryland, is back behind bars, according to police in Montgomery County.
Steven Gregory Gass, 67, has been dubbed the "old man bandit" and has an extensive history of bank robberies spanning 45 years, police said. He was arrested in July after attempting to rob a Wells Fargo Bank on North Frederick Avenue in Gaithersburg.
In 2010, Gass pleaded guilty to robbing 19 banks in Florida between 2008 and 2009. He was granted a compassionate release from prison in 2019 for medical reasons, and moved back to Maryland, police said.
On July 14, 2022, around 9:30 a.m., Montgomery County Police and Gaithersburg Police officers responded to a call for an attempted robbery of the North Frederick Avenue Wells Fargo.
Responding officers learned that a man wearing a light-colored fisherman's hat, sunglasses and a large face mask entered the bank and approached a teller. The suspect, later identified as Gass, handed the teller a handwritten note, announcing the robbery.
According to court documents, the note said "Bank Robbery" at the top and was underlined. The next line demanded $20,000 in 100s, 50s and 20s. Under that, it demanded the cash come from the first and second drawers. The last line on the note said, "you have 10 seconds don't make me hurt someone," according to the documents.
The teller walked away and another bank employee hit the silent alarm. Gass then left the bank without any money.
Documents say plain clothes Montgomery County Police officers were in the area at the time of the attempted robbery. One of the officers had received information on a possible suspect from a bank robbery a month before in Bethesda.
On June 18, 2022, police said Gass entered a Truist bank in the 10400 block of Old Georgetown Road wearing a large fisherman's hat and a blue face mask. In this case, he also handed the teller a note. That note, too, asked for large bills and said the teller only had 10 seconds to comply, court documents say. In this robbery, Gass left with an undisclosed amount of cash. Gass was captured on surveillance video entering and exiting the Bethesda bank, court documents say.
Gass is also accused of robbing a bank in Baltimore County.
Court documents offer a glimpse into Gass' long criminal history. One of the first banks Gass robbed was in Montgomery County in 1977. He was arrested for a bank robbery in Rockville. Court documents also point to a letter Gass wrote to a Florida newspaper in 2010, in which he admitted to robbing close to 60 banks.
In that letter he said he began robbing banks at a young age to fuel a cocaine addiction.
Following his arrest for the Gaithersburg robbery, court documents say Gass told officers interviewing him at police headquarters that he knew he made a mistake, and that he was going through an illness and had been sick for a while, documents say. He also told officers he was concerned about his parents, who are in their 90s, finding out about his arrest.
On July 21, 2022, Montgomery and Baltimore County Police served a residential search warrant for Gass' parents' home in Frederick. Additional evidence was gathered by Baltimore County Police, police said.
Gass is currently being held without bond on the two Montgomery County cases, and Baltimore County has obtained an arrest warrant charging him with one count of robbery.
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