A man who politely robbed a bank twice has now been found guilty.
Mohamed Worku, a 31-year-old man from Chicago, walked into a bank two years ago, walked up to a teller and pressed a note against the glass which read: “Give me the money please, thank you.”
He left with around $595 and managed to spend around a hundred before his arrest half an hour later.
Last Friday, Jan. 19, a jury found him not guilty of robbing the bank after his defence argued there were “no implicit or explicit threats of any kind,” a court heard.
Worku’s attorney, Mary Judge, admitted her client had committed a crime but argued it didn’t amount to robbery, which involves stealing something by force or “intimidation.”
On Monday afternoon, Jan. 22, 2024, three days after his release, he allegedly walked into another bank and handed an employee a similarly polite note.
“Please Give me the money, I’ll pay it back soon, Banker’s Give to me in advance,” it said, according to a criminal complaint against him.
The worker gave him more than $2,000 to set him on his way, and he was again arrested half an hour later, around $200 short of what he left with, the complaint says.
This time, though, he’s set to be charged with both bank robbery and bank theft, a charge which does not require force or intimidation to be involved.
Ms Judge, who is no longer representing Worku, told the Chicago Tribune the jury made the correct decision in his last case, and that including theft charges in such cases is how “it should be done.”