Irish bank robber the FBI dubbed Ho-Hum Bandit EXCLUSIVE
Dubliner set to return home after at least two dozen bank robberies
DUBLINER Adam Lynch, one of the most prolific bank robbers in recent United States history, never wanted to come back to Ireland, according to his former girlfriend.
But the man dubbed the Ho-Hum Bandit by the FBI may be just days away from returning, under escort by US marshals, after completing eight years in a federal penitentiary for his crimes.
Lynch was named Ho-Hum for his nonchalant, even bored, attitude while he robbed at least 24 banks in California, Colorado, Wyoming, and, it is believed, Washington state while staying with his brother, a then state trooper.
He is currently being held in an immigration facility ahead of his expected deportation.
As Lynch, originally from Howth, contemplates his return home, the woman who turned him in, his exgirlfriend, reveals in an exclusive interview with the Irish Mail on
Sunday that 42-year-old Lynch, who once ran a successful pet grooming business and lived in a million-dollar home in San Francisco, always said he did not want to go back to Ireland.
‘But then in three years, nothing was the truth,’ Julia Lundstrom says of the man who, on one hand, could be the most loving, caring individual, but on the other, someone she describes as an emotionally abusive, pathological liar – and, it turned out, an extremely good bank robber.
‘“I was very good at it and it was fun,” he told me,’ Ms Lundstrom says, remembering the last conversation she had with him before phoning the police and starting the clock on his time behind bars, mostly in Florence Federal Correctional Institution in Colorado.
In April 2011, the FBI, the lead investigators of all bank robberies in the US, had no clues to the actual identity of the Ho Hum Bandit, who had struck two dozen times in 14 months, even hitting a bank in San Diego, California on one day in April 2010, then the same one exactly a month later.
This was despite clear CCTV images of the robber, who wore a baseball or flat cap, was always polite but still threatened the tellers and sometimes showed what looked like a gun, though it later turned out to be a toy.
The break came out of nowhere, in April 2011, in a phone call to police in Denver from a toilet cubicle in Fadó Irish Bar in Denver. It was Lundstrom and she had just spent 20 minutes gleaning from Lynch, whom she had all but broken up with, all the details of his short but successful run as a robber.
Their relationship was unravelling as she had learned, in a previous meeting, of his double life and lies.
These lies include a cancer relapse involving chemotherapy treatment and surgery; a couple of million of dollars from the sale of his business being stuck in a money management account; and even a supposed call to set up a meeting with his mother when the couple were on a trip to Ireland.
Ms Lundstrom also learned of the ‘other woman’ in another city for much of the time they were together.
That fateful evening that they met in the Denver bar was supposed to be about planning his move back to Ireland. She had for the first time talked to his mother in Ireland and brother, and everyone decided it was the best move for Lynch. Then came the bombshell.
‘I was kind of betting he would walk away if he was lying, I knew how to tell then,’ Lundstrom says of the conversation where she also attempted to find out how he was often broke but then would suddenly turn up with thousands in cash.
‘“I cannot tell you,” he kept saying. I said to him, “Are you a drug dealer or a bank robber.” Then he told me, “Yes I am a bank robber”,’ Lundstrom remembers.
Then Lynch showed her a picture on his phone of a bank robbery that March, which happened just before he handed over $6,000 of $11,000 she says he owed her. ‘He told me a lot of details.’
When he told her, Lundstrom decided immediately to call the police, but held off for 20 minutes to hear those details and to not make him suspicious.
‘Not a second, it was immediate,’ she recalls of her decision. ‘It is black and white when someone does something wrong... and he knew me well enough that I was very righteous about something like that.’
She speculates that Lynch wanted to be turned in and that there was some relief.
Later, when she contacted a member of his family, Lundstrom says she was told: “You were supposed to love him, not turn him in”. Even one of her cousins said it was the wrong move to make at the time.
Lundstrom first showed the barman the image, explained the situation and asked that he call the police. An Irishman, he refused to do so. She went to the toilets, into a stall and called the police, who wanted to keep her on the line but she, fearful he would get suspicious, told them: “This is who he is, this is where you can find him.”
Within minutes, the FBI and police were on the premises to arrest Lynch. ‘He was handcufffed... he gave me a look and I did not recognise the look on his face. It was the real him. There was nothing, complete indifference.’
Lundstrom – who was interrogated that night for seven hours by the FBI as agents made sure she was not also involved – visited Lynch once in jail shortly after his arrest.
‘He was charming, silly, funny... he seemed just fine,’ says Lundstrom, who saw him once more during a court appearance when Lynch, looking rough, his hair already turning grey, looked at her in the same way as outside the bar.
A call when she was celebrating her brother’s birthday was the last time they had contact. ‘He started yelling at me: “How could you be celebrating when I am in jail?”’
Documents filed by Lynch’s defence lawyer – as he argued for a lenient sentence following guilty pleas in two jurisdictions, first in Colorado, then in California – state that Lynch was a one-time highly successful businessman in the midst of a mental health crisis after
‘But then in three years, nothing was the truth’
‘You were supposed to love him, not turn him in’
battling cancer and losing his wife and company when be embarked on a 14month robbery spree.
He was first sentenced to more than five years for robberies in Colorado and Wyoming, then a further near six years for those in California, with most of the sentence, but not all, to run consecutively.
The first of his two sprees began in February 2010 with the robbery of $2,468 from a US Bank close to the centre of San Diego.
His largest haul was just over $8,000 from a Citibank on Herschel Avenue on April 8. Lynch returned on May 8 to the very same bank and bagged a further $5,450. In total, Lynch stole $25,000 from the seven banks in San Diego.
Judge Roger Benitez said the seven robberies were carried out by “force, violence and intimidation”.
Lynch’s defence lawyer Ronald Gainor argued he should serve no more time than already imposed by the Colorado court, stating they were all one single criminal act by a man who was mentally unstable.
The Dubliner, whose father is a Trinity College graduate who lives and works in California, left Ireland in his teens, according to court documents. For some years he lived in the upmarket Corte Madera area outside San Francisco with his now ex-wife. They operated a dog grooming and walking business and lived in a house now worth $1.3 million.
Lundstrom fell for the charming Irishman after meeting him in San Francisco in late 2008 when she was vulnerable in the aftermath of a divorce following 14 years of marriage. They began a relationship, moving between the Bay City and San Diego, where Lundstrom, now a mother of one who runs her own company helping individuals stimulate the brain and memory, was winding down her financial planning business.
‘It was really romantic,’ Lundstrom says of their time together from late 2008 into 2009.
Lynch relocated to San Diego. The couple travelled, to Italy, Egypt and Ireland. But Lundstrom says the relationship began to sour on those travels, during which she claims he kept asking her about previous relationships and was verbally abusive.
And in Ireland, they were supposed to meet his mother in Dublin. But Lundstrom says a supposed telephone conversation to set up the meeting was a fake. ‘There was no one on the other end of the line.’ Lundstrom recalls. ‘He was really good at keeping me away from his family and friends.’
Back in the US, and after moving to Denver, Lynch told her his cancer had returned, which meant regular trips back to San Francisco for chemotherapy and then surgery.
She later learned he did not have the aggressive form of cancer claimed and that, for a time during their relationship, he was seeing another woman in the city. She claims there was continued verbal and emotional abuse, though he was never violent.
Lynch was officially released from federal prison on October 25, but was immediately placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and is being held in the Aurora Contract Detention Facility in Colorado.
Lynch did not respond to a request to speak or write to tell his side of the story, and neither did members of his family. Lundstrom said: ‘Everybody loved him. He had so much potential. What I really hope is that he got the help he needed in prison.’
‘She learned he did not have cancer he claimed’