Metro

‘Holiday Bandit’ pleads guilty to bank heists

A California man who became one of New York’s most-wanted criminals after a bank robbery spree last Christmas season pleaded guilty today to a variety of charges.

Marat Mikhaylich, 35, who became known as the “Holiday Bandit,” admitted to committing the series of bank jobs at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court.

“I plead guilty,” Mikhaylich told Magistrate Judge Robery Levy.

A national of Ukraine, Mikhaylich faces 181-205 months in prison when he is sentenced on nine bank robbery counts and one count of brandishing a firearm, Assistant Brooklyn US Attorney Darren LaVerne told the judge.

He also could be deported from the US after serving his sentence, officials said.

Mikhaylich traveled from the West Coast last winter and began a series of robberies at financial institutions in New York City and New Jersey that were intended to fuel his mounting heroin addiction, law enforcement sources said.

In most instances, Mikhaylich – a tall and lanky man – would walk up to the teller, pull a pistol, and demand cash, law-enforcement sources said.

The robbery spree spawned a manhunt, and last spring the tag on his stolen getaway car was scanned by one of the NYPD’s automated high- tech license-plate readers, establishing that the car was in a neighborhood in Woodside, Queens, sources said.

But it took some foot-leather detective work by a team of FBI agents to eventually track Mikhaylich to an apartment on 84th Drive in Kew Gardens.

Police and FBI agents searching his residence found several grenades, sources said.

The NYPD Bomb Squad later determined that they were inert.

Authorities say that Mikhaylich has a rap sheet in California that include arrests for drug possession and petty theft.

mmaddux@nypost.com