CHICAGO — A Minnesota man traveled to Chicago twice last year to rob banks, but he lost the money when someone stole his car with the cash inside, according to a federal criminal complaint.
Alan Duncan, a convicted murderer, is charged with robbing Selfreliance Federal Credit Union, 2332 West Chicago Avenue, on November 20. Duncan returned to Minnesota after the robbery and is suspected of returning to Chicago ten days later to rob another bank.
But Duncan confided in his brother that he lost the money — and more — when someone stole his car with the cash inside.
Three days before the robbery, Minneapolis police arrested Duncan for fleeing police and a weapons violation, an FBI agent said in the complaint. Duncan was released the next day. And the day after that, the agent alleged, Duncan’s car ran a series of Illinois toll plazas as it headed toward Chicago from Wisconsin.
“Give me all the money or I’ll shoot,” Duncan allegedly told the bank teller, who handed over $6,010.
Investigators tracked the robber’s getaway car, which is registered to Duncan, across Chicago and out of the state as it ran more toll booths on the way to Wisconsin.
A toll plaza camera showed the passenger in Duncan’s car wearing a sweatshirt with the word TRUE written across the chest. The agent said that the bank robber wore matching sweatpants with the word TRUE written down the leg.
Before leaving Illinois, Duncan stopped at a toll plaza convenience store. There, surveillance video allegedly showed him wearing those pants.
Ten days later, a robber who traveled in a similar car robbed Huntington Bank, 4012 North Pulaski Road, of $2,170. A dye pack hidden in the cash exploded as the vehicle neared the interstate, and a FedEx driver gathered up $170 that flew out of the car after the pack detonated.
On December 2, police in the Minneapolis suburb where Duncan lives found his car abandoned with the engine running and a door open, revealing red dye stains on the interior, according to the agent.
Later that day, Duncan called the police to report that he had loaned the car to a guy named “CJ,” who never returned it.
But Duncan had a different story a few days later when he called his brother, who was in the Hennepin County jail. The car, Duncan revealed, had been stolen from outside a Minneapolis homeless shelter.
“They taking that b*tch not knowing it was full. When I say full bro’ I’m talking about I had twelve thousand dollars cash … They took that suitcase boy, it f*cked me up,” the FBI agent quoted Duncan as saying in the recorded call. The agent wrote that he believed the money Duncan “lost” came from the bank robberies.
Federal prosecutors charged Duncan with the Selfreliance robbery in February, but he was only recently arrested. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole ordered him held without bail.
