Man Gets Over Eight Years in `Tri-Cities' Bank Robberies

A ``troubled individual'' who endured child abuse so terrible it gave a federal judge pause was sentenced today to more than eight years behind bars for a series of Southern California bank robberies. Ernest Ivar Viana, 39, pleaded guilty in December before U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II to bank heists last July and August in Glendale, Tarzana, Los Angeles, La Verne, Pasadena and Westlake Village.

The robberies were credited to the ``Tri-Cities Bandit.'' At sentencing, Wright said he had never before seen a defendant who has suffered so much ``horrific'' abuse as a child. ``This was really a situation where he literally had no chance,'' the judge said of Viana, a life-long drug addict and former male prostitute now infected with HIV/AIDS.

``This is a troubled individual who has endured a life plagued by physical, mental and sexual abuse.'' Quoting from a sealed pre-sentence report, Wright said Viana first ingested heroin at age 9, began using narcotics with his father at age 13, and became an addict at 14. His addict father was so physically abusive that the judge asked if the man happened to be in court today because ``I'm thinking of putting him in jail.''

Wright said the robber ``was a one-man crime spree, an absolute menace to society.'' Since 1997, the judge said, the Chicago native ``has been arrested every few months -- unless he's been in custody.''

In a tearful statement to the court, Viana apologized ``for the horrible things I did -- going in there and robbing those banks. But I never went in there with the mind frame to hurt anyone.''

The defendant cried as he told of his mother's drug-related death, and how when his father showed up at the hospital as she lay dying, he realized the elder Viana must have felt pain, too. `

`You have a big heart, sir,'' Wright told the shackled, weeping bank robber. ``A big and giving heart.''

Sentencing Viana to 100 months in a Chicago-area federal prison, Wright said that while he ``needed to be taken out of circulation for quite a long time, I'm actually moved by the gentleman.''

The judge also ordered Viana to pay restitution of $21,000 to the banks he robbed. Viana was charged last September with a dozen counts of bank robbery. His getaway driver, 42-year-old Oleg Gorokhovsky, pleaded guilty to four counts of aiding and abetting and faces sentencing on April 16.

The pair were arrested after a holdup at a First California Bank branch in Westlake Village, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. The robberies, in which demand notes but no guns were used, began June 13, just days after Viana was released from his most recent bid in state prison.

Upon release from prison, he had begun ``shooting heroin, smoking methamphetamine and crack, using GHB, and slamming powder cocaine daily,'' according to court documents. In the final robbery, bank employees in Westlake Village told Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies that Viana came into the bank and passed a note to one of the tellers, demanding cash in large denominations.

A description of the getaway car was broadcast across the region. A sheriff's deputy on patrol near Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the Ventura (101) Freeway spotted a vehicle matching the description of the getaway car, and the two suspects were arrested in a traffic stop.

The ``Tri-Cities Bandit'' got his FBI moniker after being linked to bank robberies throughout the region.

–City News Service