
Two men are accused of committing eight bank robberies in Colorado Springs and Fountain in which they took turns accosting tellers at gunpoint, Colorado Springs police said Friday.
Police described Daryl Keener and Gary Cyprian as “career criminals” who netted more than $64,000 in a scheme meant to make police believe that only one man was responsible for the heists.
“If there were such a thing as a pro bank robber in the area, they were it,” detective Sgt. Dale Fox said at a news conference.
Keener, 30, and Cyprian, 28, met in prison, worked for the same employer and spent “nearly every waking hour together,” during which they worked out a uniform approach to robbing banks, Fox said.
One man entered the bank with a handgun while the other waited in a getaway car.
“They would walk in and tell the customers to get on the floor, and they were very comfortable doing it,” Fox said.
The men — who wore hooded sweatshirts and masks — used similar language to ask for large bills and warn clerks against placing security features such as dye packs or GPS beacons in the cash.
Police say Keener brought the expertise about bank security and police investigative tactics: He was sentenced in a bank robbery in 2003 and served six years.
The robberies started Dec. 28 and ended March 8, just a few days after police got lucky by finding a business with surveillance footage of a sport-utility vehicle fleeing a March 3 robbery at Key Bank, 1115 Elkton Drive, Fox said.
An employee of the business later recognized the same vehicle driving down the street more than two miles away.
This time, however, the worker had a view of the rear license plate that couldn’t be seen on the surveillance footage. The plate was traced to a Dodge Durango belonging to Cyprian and his wife, police said.
Police turned up four weapons while searching a garage used by Keener, including three pistols and a semiautomatic variant of a Fabrique Nationale carbine rifle generally associated with military special forces groups.
The pair are in El Paso County jail on $100,000 bail each.
Tags: armed joy, bank, Colorado Springs, robbery