MELINDA LEWIS
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Sucker! A would-be bank robber walked into a Manhattan bank hoping for a sweet payday — but left with nothing but some hard candy when a quick-thinking teller gave him the runaround, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
The dimwitted crook, who was still in the wind last night, made off with a handful of lollipops as a consolation prize when his hold-up of a Garment District Chase branch went nowhere.
The unidentified robber entered the branch at around 10 a.m. Friday and handed the teller a note that read, “I have a bomb. Give me some money now,” the sources said.
But the bank employee was unfazed.
“I do not read notes,” Melinda Lewis defiantly responded, and instead handed the thief a Chase withdrawal slip, according to the sources.
So the bungling robber — who didn’t even bother to don a mask or gloves — repeated his threat, writing, “I have a bomb” on the slip, and then handed it back.
“Read the note again!” he ordered.
But the coolheaded Lewis just instructed the perp to swipe his bank card at the counter, the sources said.
Meanwhile, she told her colleague in Spanish that she was being robbed.
That apparently was the last straw for the crook.
“Ma’am, I ain’t got no time for this,” the robber groaned, and then grabbed a handful of lollipops from a bowl and fled the scene, the sources said.
A Chase spokeswoman declined to comment on the incident.
It was the beginning of a low-yielding spree for the loser, who walked away from three other heists with less than $300, the sources said.
He tried the same stunt at a 35th Street Fed Ex office, where he made off with a paltry $50.
He later resurfaced at a Modell’s sporting goods store in Brooklyn, where he grabbed a baseball cap, placed it on a counter at the register, and handed a cashier a note that read: “I have a bomb and a weapon, do not move, give me money now,” the sources said.
When the worker refused, the fed-up robber threw down the note in disgust and dashed out of the store.
His biggest score came an hour later, when he walked inside a SoHo IHOP and confronted a hostess, handing her a note that read, “I have a gun and a knife, give me some money, don’t move.”
He put his hand in his jacket and ordered her not to move.
A cashier forked over about $200.
Additional reporting by Dan MacLeod and Larry Celona