Ho Hum bandit is2020 deported from US
Dubliner got nickname from bored, nonchalant attitude on bank raids
DUBLINER Adam Lynch, one of the most prolific bank robbers in recent United States history, has finally been deported back to Ireland after spending three months in an immigration detention centre.
Lynch, dubbed the Ho Hum Bandit by the FBI following two dozen robberies across several states, was returned to his home city of Dublin last week.
His return follows nearly 10 years in federal prison, mostly in the tough Florence Correctional Institution
outside Denver, for a string of robberies in California, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington.
He was caught when his estranged girlfriend called law enforcement after he confessed over drinks in an Irish bar in Denver, ending a near 14-month robbing spree.
‘On November 20, 2019, an immigration judge with the Executive Office for Immigration Review found Lynch was subject to removal as a convicted aggravated felon and subsequently ordered him removed from the United States to Ireland,’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman
Alethea Smock said in a statement.
‘On January 16, 2020, ICE’s enforcement and removal operations deported Lynch from the
United States to Dublin, Ireland, pursuant to an immigration judge’s removal order,’ Ms Smock added.
The deportation of the Ho Hum bandit, so named by law enforcement because of his nonchalant, even bored, attitude during the hold-ups of at least 24 facilities, appears to have been delayed by issues over his passport.
In a previous statement to the Irish Mail on Sunday two weeks after the judge’s order, the agency said: ‘He is still awaiting travel documents so he can be repatriated.’
In an interview with the MoS, his former girlfriend Julia Lundstrom, told how the 42-year-old, who once ran a dog-grooming and dog walking business in San Francisco, never wanted to return home.
‘But then in three years, nothing was the truth,’ Ms Lundstrom said. She described Lynch as someone who could be the most loving, caring individual, but on the other she describes him 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’, Lundstrom said, remembering the last conversation she had before calling the police from a toilet stall in the Fadó bar in the centre of Denver in April 2011.
Lynch, 42, who is originally from Howth, did not respond to a request to speak or write to tell his side of the story, and neither did members of his family, but Lundstrom describes a man of huge talent and energy, someone who could immediately charm people and would have been successful in many fields.
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.
His defence lawyer Ronald Gainor, arguing in mitigation for leniency during one sentencing, said his actions were part of one single criminal act by someone who was mentally unstable.
The defence lawyer told the court that Lynch just wanted to get back home to Ireland.
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 exwife.
They ran a dog-grooming and walking business and lived in a house now worth $1.3m.
‘Awaiting documents so he can be repatriated’
‘I was very good at bank robbery and it was fun’