The FBI is investigating a Wednesday bank robbery in Ellicott City in which three armed robbers ordered customers and employees to the floor at gunpoint.
The holdup marks a break from a recent trend in which bank robbers quietly slip the teller a note to steal money, Baltimore FBI Special Agent Michelle Crnkovich said.
“That?s surprising,” Crnkovich said of Wednesday?s holdup. “It?s usually a pretty innocuous note job.”
Three men armed with handguns entered the Provident Bank on the 9330 block of Route 40 between 10:47 and 11 a.m., authorities said. They then ordered the 10 customers and five employees to the floor at gunpoint and stole money from the tellers? cash drawers.
The suspects, who are described as black males, fled the bank in a green sport utility vehicle, police said.
Authorities found a dye pack from the bank on the service road near the rear of the bank.
It?s not unusual for the Howard County Police Department to involve the FBI in bank robbery investigations, said Sherry Llewellyn, Howard County police spokeswoman.
Crnkovich said federal agents can seek longer and tougher penalties in federal court than Howard County authorities could attempt to obtain in state courts.
“A federal sentence is going to be more detrimental to the criminal,” she said.
Wednesday?s holdup marks Howard County?s 15th bank robbery this year. Robberies increased by 16.6 percent across the Baltimore Metropolitan area in the first six months of 2006, compared with the first half of 2005, according to the Maryland State Police.
