Stolen Dreams

A Wall Street Trader Lives A Secret Life As A Serial Bank Robber

(CBS)  The few witnesses he did have recounted details that made Skopek very nervous. "He’d enter the bank and he would do an immediate surveillance. He would pick out that teller that he felt was the weakest one," he says. "He would tell them, 'Hey I have a gun. Hurry up,' and emphasized the fact that he had a gun. And you know, 'Don’t fool around. No funny games. No alarm.' Very scary."

Skopek says he was worried things were going to escalate and get violent, and his bosses were also starting to worry that sooner or later someone was going to get hurt.

The first few banks the robber hit were all Fleet banks, now owned by Bank of America, all near one another on the South Shore of Long Island. He’d strike on a Thursday or Friday. Skopek thought that was information he could use.

Police set up surveillance of Fleet banks along the South Shore; instead, the bank robber went to Long Island's North Shore at a different time of day and a different day of the week.

The robberies continued. Every two weeks or so, Skopek would head to a scene, scour the area and find more discarded disguises but nothing to help him identify the bank robber

The criminal Skopek was looking for seemed to have thought of everything.

"He used to go in the front of the bank, take a cup of coffee and put it on the mailbox and walk into the bank to commit the robbery," says Michelle DiPaolo, the assistant district attorney assigned to the case. "After he committed the robbery he would pick up the cup of coffee off the mailbox and continue down the street. Who would suspect someone who’s walking around with a cup of coffee of committing a bank robbery?"

He even thought about the notes demanding money. So far, there had not a fingerprint on them - the robber must have worn gloves when he wrote them. He sometimes left the notes with the tellers and sometimes took them back

The authorities tried to learn as much as they could from the traumatized tellers.

Paul DeStefano is in charge of security at the State Bank of Long Island, the ninth bank the robber attacked. The day the bank was hit, the teller on duty was a woman with a baby at home.

"This is not an ATM withdrawal where there's a mindless entity that you're removing money from. It's a living breathing person," DeStefano says.

When the robber came into the bank, he handed the teller a note threatening her with a gun if she didn't hand over the money. As frightened as she was, she still she had the presence of mind to hold on to that note. Police say her decision changed everything for them. Because unlike all the other notes the robber had passed, this one held a vital clue to the robber’s identity: the note was written on a piece of paper simply torn from a notebook.

"I immediately stated to think that for someone to rip the page out of a spiral notebook, he would have to grab it pretty good and pull it from the book," says Det. Skopek. "I thought fingerprints."

Veteran Detective Charlie Costello was working in the fingerprint lab that day. He sprayed the note with a chemical that can bring out hidden prints; heat from a regular iron activates the chemical. He examined the note using a machine called a "crime scope."

Costello ran his results through the FBI database. There was no hit. Then he ran the prints through the local Long Island database and to his surprise, a name popped up from almost 20 years ago.

In 1984, a teenager had been arrested for drinking and driving, and was fingerprinted. And now, those prints matched the prints of the bank robber.

But Det. Skopek was still in for a surprise - the man he had been looking for, the robber who committed ten bank robberies, was a happily married Wall Street trader, the son of a cop, who lived in one of the finest neighborhoods in the area.

But with that matching fingerprint, Det. Skopek was sure he had the right guy handcuffed to the table.

[rmstaff]

The Fairy tale ending would be the Princess stood by her man through thick and thin till death do they part!
Obviously she was not a Princess! The vows she took were meaningless! She was a kept woman! He certainly was not right but he garners more sympathy than this broad as she wilted when the going got tough! Thankfully, her parents along with his were there to pick up the pieces and lead this inept broad through the hard times!
Write a book? Stick to giving massages and prostituting yourself in the real estate industy!
As to Stephen, he is paying his debt to our so called society. At least he gets to see his children. He will be free in a couple of years and hopefully he will be able to decipher the wrongs and when released meet someone who will be a little more compassionate and stand by him regardless!
Bet she has already found a new "Sugar Daddy"!
Good luck Stephen!

[v22forever]

I don't understand the underlying mystery here? Viz, "why did he do it?" It is so obvious that Ray Charles could see it. I believe this guy knew to the bottom of his soul that if the tough times hit, his wife would desert him. In the end, when the money ran out, so did she.
On the one hand, I see him as a sympathetic schmuck and on the other, I see him as a dumb ass who was willing to prostitute himself for his choice of a wife.

[csi-lover]

You do the crime, you do the time. Now when are banks going to get armed security guards in every bank? What's more expensive, paying someone to protect the bank, or getting ripped off?

Da.

[raymarfam]

To those of you who are bashing the wife - have you not heard/read about the "Clark Rockefeller" story? He was married to a very intelligent woman who made millions of dollars a year - and she didn't know about his lies until more than a decade after they'd married. Seems to me that if someone like his wife didn't know - it's not such a stretch to believe that the wife in this story didn't have a clue about what was going on. A lot of women - myself not one of them thank God - are not at all familiar with the financial status of their families. As far as she knew he was working & making a good living for their family. This unfortunately was not the truth. So she divorced him afterwards - do you blame her? I would do the same. I'm quite sure that if he'd sat down and spoken with her about their money problems, she would have tried to help - instead he chose to rob banks to avoid facing his wife, his friends and his family.

[kfreeman1967]

Perhaps he should have been more upfront with her. If they couldn't afford the lifestyle she longed for, and he longed to provide, then why didn't he just TELL HER? I am a stay at home mom (granted, I do not send my child to private school, and I drive an 11 yr old vehicle, so my situation is somewhat different), so my husband brings the money home, but I sit and pay the bills. We both know exactly where we stand and what we're spending. If you want to be a grown-up and be married and live in a grown-up world, then anything other than a complete open dialogue about the household budget is moronic. In my world, it would be unthinkable to just wander around spending money without ever questioning the bank balance, or the realism of a purchase, etc., but perhaps in her world, in her circle of friends, maybe they lived that way. This isn't 1956, ladies, you should WANT to know, and if you don't know, you should ask. Otherwise, you aren't fairly sharing the burden.

[sunlover518]

I doubt she was ignorant. probably got red flags but didnt want to give up her lifestyle. now she claims ignorance. dont get married again girl you are a bad judge of character

[mbsheisey]

Please don't judge this woman until you've walked in her shoes. When your spouse wants to keep a secret, they can be successful. I discovered my husband was in serious money trouble after he committed suicide. I knew something was a little off, but he was so good at covering it up, like this man, that I would reluctantly put it out of my mind for awhile, hoping that maybe he woul tell me when he was ready. This went on for years. I would beg and beg him to let us do the bills together and we would do them together for, say, one month, and then the next month, he would go right back to doing them by himself and hiding them from me. I would tell him that I knew I was bad with money and that paying the bills together would help me to get a feel of what was coming in and going out of the house, cause I'm bad with numbers. He still would not do it. Occasionally he would let his jolly facade slip and I could tell something was bothering him, and I would ask him to please go talk to someone and not hold everything inside like most men do and die early of a heart attack cause I loved him so much and did not want to lose him. He told me that men did not go talk to therapists. Well, after 25 years of marriage, he lost his job, but he told me he was laid off. A few months later he committed suicide and after I could see ALL of the mail, I discovered that he had several credit cards that I didn't know about and was about $100,000.00 in debt. I also discovered that the reason he lost his job was because he used his boss's credit card improperly. Several people that he spent his time with during the day also told me that he seemed to be caught up in gambling online. However, when I talked to the police when they investigated his suicide, they said that they could not find anybody who had anything bad to say about him. My husband was also an extremely well-liked person who found himself in an impossible situation, like this man. He tried to be the perfect husband to me, even though I did not ask him to be. I love jewelry and cannot walk by a jewelry store window, but I discovered that when I would stop to look, he would feel like he had to buy me something! I just wanted to look!
Now I have lost my hubband, my best friend, my house, my job, and have gone to live with my mother. Not where I thought I would be at 52 years old.

[drthvader]

Good thing you have a mother, concentrate on that.

[mwalker63]

I for one wish CBS & 48HRS would stop with all this darn Michael Jackson videos and lets get back to work with the real crime videos I am so accustomed to watching. I watch this daily for the last couple of years and now I find myself on you tube looking for old videos cause 48hrs have not come up with anything new until now and the video for stolen dreams I still can't watch. C'MON CBS, I REALLY LIKE WATCHING THE GOOD WORK YOU PUT INTO YOUR STORIES BUT WE NEED SOME NEW MATERIAL. EVEN YOUR PAST VIDEOS YOU HAVE LOCKED UP AND ONLY HAVE PREVIEWS AVAILABLE. ANY LONGER AND YOUR GOING TO LOSE A FAN.

[John_Merritt]

I can only imagine what it took for either one to finally admit they were only pawns in a vicious cycle of life. I guess that is what happens when a persons world comes unraveled before everyone's eyes. There is no hiding from the truth. The sad part is that the 'dream' they sought to attain was only a mirage.

We have placed such importance on 'things' within life we think will make us better parents and friends to everyone we meet. When in reality the true treasure always lies within the hearts of men and women everywhere. To covet something you do not possess, but desire, opens each of us up to tantalizing and devastating possibilities. But that is what we do when we start 'chasing the bag' of dreams that sometimes were not meant for everybody.

Chasing a dream is what we as humans do because it is dangled before our eyes daily, like the carrot to the horse. We are drawn in because we see our neighbors, friends and everyone else with something we would like to have, and are unable to attain without some type of intervention or modification of our lifestyle.

The true victims were and always will be the children. They are essentially held hostage to the unrealistic expectations of their parents and they have no recourse except to go along for the ride.

As Steven sits in his jail cell (9 yrs. got off easy) he now knows the errors of his ways because he had it all, and he did not realize it. I am sure being a commodities trader is stressful but a person has to be really bad when you can't make money off the oil market.

I can only hope and pray that his wife and children can survive without their father. I also hope their friends they had before, are still their friends today and can support them through this difficult time.

Moral of the story: Be thankful for everything you have. If you have a TRUE belief in God and a great woman with wonderful children and parents and friends who love you; what more do you need in this life? Because everything we do here, is only the prep course for what awaits us in the future. If we blow opportunities when they arise, there are no assurances we will ever get to revisit that blessing again.

[voxpopulus]

I hope she was at least good in bed.

[mariholly]

voxpopulus: That was a weird comment. How shallow! When my father lost his job, we ate Swanson Chix/beef pies and had "Stay-Vacations" ! We were happy. Enough said!