A jury Monday convicted a man who was nicknamed the “Chameleon Bandit” of robbing two tellers at a Point Loma bank as well as holding up nine other tellers in other banks.
\nThe eight woman, four man jury deliberated 9 1\/4 hours over three days before convicting Darius Demon Lake, 29, of El Cajon, in San Diego Superior Court.
\nLake got the nickname because of his changing appearances in robberies that occurred in Oct., 2017.
\nThe net loss to all six banks was $16,801.
\nTwo tellers were held up Oct. 12, 2017 at the Pacific Western Bank, located at 1661 Rosecrans St. The other banks were located in El Cajon, Chula Vista, and San Marcos.
\nJurors deadlocked 6-6 on two robbery charges in which the tellers could not identify Lake as the bandit when they were held up on Oct. 10 in El Cajon.
\nLake has a hearing Friday before Judge Robert O\u2019Neill which involves his three prior convictions for robbing banks in 2012 in U.S. District Court. Lake has waived having a jury trial to determine whether the prior convictions are valid.
\nO\u2019Neill will look at federal documents to see if the convictions are valid as this will affect the sentence Lake will receive.
\nDeputy District Attorney Lucille Yturralde said Lake could get a maximum term of 125 years to life in prison. Since Lake is a third strike defendant, he faces 25 years to life for five banks he was convicted of robbing.
\nYturralde told jurors that Lake used the money to buy $180 lap dances, and purchases of jewelry and champagne. Jurors got to see bank camera videos, and the prosecutor noted a cursive tattoo on Lake\u2019s neck was seen on bank camera photos.
\nHis attorney, Jeremy Thornton, argued Lake did not commit any of the hold-ups and was only arrested because of his past bank robbery convictions.
\nThornton showed photos of Lake\u2019s wrist, which was heavily tattooed, and bank photos of the robber\u2019s wrist, which did not show the tattoos–possibly because of the lighting.
\nLake\u2019s palm print on a bank counter was mentioned by the prosecutor as a key piece of evidence, but Thornton urged jurors not to consider it because he said it was altered.
\nThornton argued that none of the witnesses recalled seeing his tattoos. Yturralde argued that witnesses were “frightened for their life” and Lake was moving too fast for them to focus on tattoos.
\nFBI special agent Alex Esconde testified the series was called the “Chameleon Bandit” because “it looked like he was changing his appearance.”
\nThe bandit wore a hard hat in only the first robbery, and different styles in clothing in later hold-ups, said Esconde.
\nLake did not testify in the trial that began Jan. 25. He was also convicted of attempted robbery in one incident in which there was no loss. He remains in jail on $500,000 bail.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A jury Monday convicted a man who was nicknamed the “Chameleon Bandit” of robbing two tellers at a Point Loma bank as well as holding up nine other tellers in other banks. The eight woman, four man jury deliberated 9 1\/4 hours over three days before convicting Darius Demon Lake, 29, of El Cajon, in […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":275024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11561","_seopress_titles_title":"\u2018Chameleon Bandit\u2019 convicted of robbing Point Loma bank","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11551,11561],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-peninsula-beacon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}