Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Although Minnesota's most
prolific bank robber admitted in court that he held up 31 banks in less
than a year, he now seeks to take it back, a federal prosecutor claims.
In a strongly worded legal memo to the judge who will sentence
Sheikh Bilaal Muhammad Arafat -- who until July was known as Mark Wetsch
-- the prosecutor said the admitted bank robber now denies
responsibility and wants to renegotiate his plea deal, something the
government has no interest in doing.
In May, Arafat signed a deal agreeing to a 14-year prison
sentence for the robberies. In her memo, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deidre
Aanstad said he deserves every minute of it.
"The sheer volume and nature of the bank robberies committed by
the defendant warrant a significant sentence of imprisonment," she wrote
of the former nursing home executive, adding that he "exhibits an
unrepentant attitude towards his criminal conduct."
U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson has yet to set a
sentencing date. Arafat, 51, of Minneapolis is facing his second stretch
in prison; he did time for a 2005 federal mail fraud conviction.
Aanstad also wants Arafat to pay almost $109,000 in restitution.
That would be in addition to more than $1.5 million in restitution that
he owes from the mail fraud case.
The prosecutor said some of the money would reimburse bank
tellers for illnesses or impairments they suffered after they were
robbed.
Beginning with a Bremer Bank robbery in Minneapolis on Jan. 11,
2011, a masked man dressed in dark clothing knocked over banks at a
prodigious pace. The FBI nicknamed him the "Man in Black" because of his
attire.
The robberies ended Jan. 3, 2012, about 90 minutes after a masked
gunman held up the Rolling Hills Bank & Trust in Brewster, Minn.,
145 miles southwest of St. Paul. As Wetsch (as he was then known) drove
back to the Twin Cities, he was stopped by a police detective in St.
Peter who had heard the radio bulletin about the robbery and thought the
car matched one used in a bank heist in that town 12 days earlier.
After his arrest, Arafat told officers that he hit the bank in
Brewster because he needed money for a trip to his wife's homeland of
Somalia the next day. Agents found an airline ticket to Kenya (travelers
bound for Somalia generally fly to Nairobi) among his possessions.
He was indicted in February 2012 on 13 counts of armed bank
robbery. He denied involvement in all but the Brewster heist and
complained that the government was out to get him because he is Muslim,
has two wives and had expressed support for the terrorist group
al-Shabaab.
But in May, he reached a deal with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty
to five counts, and the others were dropped. Part of the deal involved
his admitting in court and under oath that he committed 31 bank
robberies.
Thirty of those came during eight months of 2011; he spent the
other four months of the year in prison for violating terms of his
supervised release in the fraud case.
During the time he was free, he averaged a bank robbery every eight days.
His spree eclipsed the state's previous record-holder, John
Whitrock, whom the FBI dubbed "The Fishing Hat Bandit" for the jaunty
chapeaus he sported in 19 robberies from the summer of 2003 to January
2005.
Whitrock was sentenced to 15 years and is due for release in
February 2018. He'll get out nine months after the scheduled release of
Carl Gugasian, the man considered the nation's most prolific bank
robber.
Gugasian, whom the FBI nicknamed "The Friday Night Bank Robber,"
was a statistician and engineer who spent three decades robbing more
than 50 banks up and down the East Coast. He is serving a 17-year
sentence at a federal prison in New Jersey.
Since being charged, Arafat has dismissed two public defenders
and decided to represent himself. He has become a prolific legal writer;
as of Tuesday, the docket in his case contained 169 pro se motions,
letters, complaints, appeals and other writings he has filed with the
court.
Aside from documents that might be filed in any criminal case,
Arafat has filed complaints about conditions in the jail, his access to a
computer, his lack of reading glasses and his assertion that officials
at the Sherburne County Jail aren't providing him a diet that
sufficiently adheres to Muslim halal rules.
Among his most recent filings are his complaints to Nelson that
the court, U.S. marshals and jailers don't always address him by his new
name. In July, a state judge granted his request to change his name
from Mark Wetsch to Sheikh Bilaal Muhammad Arafat.
Nelson issued an order in August noting the name change. But on
Oct. 2, Arafat filed a motion claiming U.S. marshals were in contempt of
the order; he did not cite examples.
The same day, he wrote Aanstad and, according to her later memo
to Nelson, he "denied acceptance of responsibility and requested a
renegotiated term of imprisonment."
He also filed objections to a pre-sentence report in which he
denied any armed bank robberies and "disputed multiple factual details
... that are supported by investigative reports, victim accounts, and
the defendant's own pleas of guilty," the prosecutor wrote. (His
objections and the report are sealed.)
Aanstad said Arafat's behavior is even more galling when one
considers he was previously convicted of mail fraud and served nearly
four years in prison.
He pleaded guilty in April 2005 to cheating the nursing home
company he worked for out of nearly $1.3 million. The government said
the money financed a profligate lifestyle: a half-million-dollar home,
fancy cars, golf trips to Scotland, vacations in Hawaii and a private
coach to travel with his track-star daughter.
"Any attempts made by the defendant to show remorse for his
actions are negated by his denial of acceptance of responsibility,"
Aanstad wrote.