FBI: Thieves held bank manager, wife overnight

updated 9:23 p.m. ET Oct. 22, 2007

PHOENIX - Thieves held a bank manager and his wife hostage overnight, then accompanied the manager to work the following morning and made off with $400,000, the FBI said Monday.

The couple was held handcuffed for about 12 hours.

The FBI says the men took the manager to his bank Friday morning before the branch had opened. When bank staff arrived, the thieves took them hostage as well.

They forced staff to open the bank vault and made away with about $400,000, escaping in a minivan photographed by a bank surveillance camera.

The FBI believes the robbers followed the manager home and attempted a similar heist at another location the day before but called it off. Authorities declined to say why it was called off.

No one was injured either time.

The FBI and Wells Fargo are offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the three men in Friday's robbery at a Wells Fargo bank branch in Tempe.

"We anticipate after they blow through this $400,000, they will do it again," FBI Agent John Lewis said.

Reminiscent of film plot
The invasions bore a resemblance to "Bandits," a 2001 movie in which characters played by Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton spend the night at the homes of bank managers before accompanying them to the bank to rob them without security guards or patrons getting in the way.

Police said two of the real-life thieves wore black tactical-style clothing, including hoods, while the third posed as a construction worker in a mustard-yellow hard hat and an orange reflective vest.

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