A CLOSE CALL…WITH A DOOR MAT
I was at a small-bank closing in Tillar,
Arkansas, when we averted disaster through sheer luck. Because the closing
involved a payoff, in which depositors are paid by check, we had to remove the
bank’s cash from the premises. This was not a problem with most of the cash. We
could return it by armored car to the Federal Reserve as long as the seals were
still on the money bags that had been sent to the bank. But this still left a
substantial amount of loose cash, mostly from the teller windows, and coin that
we had to remove from the bank. For security purposes and to keep a low
profile, we limited the number of people who knew when we were moving the
money. We arranged for a banker in the neighboring county to open his vault on
a Sunday morning and house the money. The local sheriff agreed to be our
escort. Several of us met at the bank early that morning and loaded the trunk
of the former bank car with the remaining money. Because the cash bags
contained mostly coin, we formed a line of FDIC staff from the vault to the car
and passed the bags along. To shorten the distance, we pulled the car alongside
the bank and tossed the bags out of the window, rather than carry them the
longer distance through the bank’s front door. We loaded the car, drove to the
bank in the neighboring county, locked the money in the bank’s vault, and
agreed to return on Monday to count all the cash jointly. It wasn’t until the
next day that we learned each of the teller drawers had contained dye packs
hidden with the money. These packs explode permanent ink on the money—and the
thief—in the event of a robbery. We quickly called the neighboring banker
before anyone had a chance to count the cash and arranged for one of the
tellers to remove the dye. We also learned that the bank had a security device
under the front door welcome mat that could have triggered the explosion of dye
if we or a robber had used the front door. By taking the money through the
window, we had inadvertently circumvented the security system. --William R.
Ostermiller
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