FBI Provides a Profile of the A’s Bandit : Robbery: Agents and police say a suspect in string of 29 bank robberies was an ordinary but lucky guy. The suspect’s luck ran out after a robbery Friday.

Calling him brazen and uncommonly lucky, the FBI and San Diego police said Monday that luck simply ran out on the so-called A’s Bandit, the ordinary-looking robbery suspect arrested Friday shortly after the 29th in a string of San Diego-area robberies that achieved national reknown.

Young, preppie and clean-cut, the robbery suspect confounded authorities for three months precisely because he was so ordinary-looking, authorities said at a press conference shortly after David W. Malley, 21, an unemployed San Diego man, pleaded not guilty in federal court to one count of bank robbery.

“A lot of it, I don’t want to belabor what you’ve already heard, is that he’s a very ordinary guy,” said Joe Johnson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Diego office.

“He looks like a lot of people,” Johnson said. “This was a lot of the problem,” since the robber had no distinguishing features that attracted attention, he said.

“Also,” Johnson said, “he was lucky. He had a good string of luck.”

Malley, who is wanted on a parole violation in connection with a theft warrant in New York state, was arrested at 4:15 p.m. last Friday after nearly a dozen law enforcement officers arrested him in the courtyard of a University City complex where he had been living, FBI agents said.

Since then, Malley, also known as David W. Mailey, has been held without bond at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego. A bail hearing is set for Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Harry McCue.

Malley was charged Monday only in connection with the 1:40 p.m. Friday robbery of a San Diego Trust & Savings branch in University City. He pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could draw up to 25 years in prison on that single charge, authorities said.

But Johnson and San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen stressed Monday that Malley is the prime suspect in the string of 28 other holdups. Malley resembles the suspect in the three-month spree, Johnson said, adding that all 29 were robbed in the same way--by a cool, calm, fashion-conscious holdup artist.

“He was very brazen in the way he robbed banks,” said FBI Agent John J. Kelly, one of the agents on the case.

Stretching from Feb. 5 through April 26 and from downtown San Diego to Del Mar, the robberies marked the “most prolific bank robbery spree in San Diego law enforcement history,” Johnson said.

The total take was $36,401, the FBI and San Diego police said. None of the money has been recovered, Kelly said. “Not yet,” said Kelly, modeling an Oakland Athletics baseball cap with the international symbol for “no,” a red circle crossed by a diagonal line, pasted over the A’s insignia.

As Kelly’s hat revealed, the robber was infamous among police. He prompted a “lot of discussion and in-house joking” among San Diego police officers, Burgreen said.

The A’s Bandit was named because of the Oakland Athletics baseball cap he wore during the first seven robberies.

Most of the holdups occurred near freeways, mostly in the Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach areas. He got as much as $1,200 at one bank and as little as $300 at another. On March 29, the bandit robbed banks 20 miles apart in Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, La Jolla and Kearny Mesa, all within two hours.

As the robberies mounted, his wardrobe expanded. At various times, the robber appeared in a white sweat shirt, a white jacket, a gray jacket, a black denim jacket, a brown suit, an olive-green suit and flowered shirt with a dark riding cap, blue jeans, white tennis shoes and cowboy boots.

The robber always wore sunglasses. Curiosity focused on his youthful looks, fashionable dress and casual stroll as he calmly passed a teller a handwritten note and then, as he made his escape, looked squarely at security cameras. No one ever saw the robber carrying a gun.

Malley was described Monday in federal court papers as 6 feet tall, 165 pounds, with reddish-brown hair and green clothes.

Malley was Born in Ramapo, N.Y. He moved to San Diego in late January, the FBI says. He has been convicted on a theft charge in Binghamton, N.Y., Kelly said, adding that he had no other details of that case.

The day of the first robbery, Malley moved into an Ocean Beach apartment.

“He was very flamboyant,” said one of his roommates there, Steve O’Connor, a construction worker. “He was cocky and off the wall.”

Another roommate, Kyle Thomas, 34, said Malley bragged about dating a San Diego police officer and a flier based at Miramar Naval Air Station.

O’Connor told a reporter for KFMB-TV (Channel 8) that Malley did not have a job. Yet he’d “come home with all kinds of stuff every day,” O’Connor said. “$400, $500 worth of clothes. Furniture and cars and jewelry and you name it.”

He also told Channel 8 that Malley “would dye his hair before he’d do a number, put on a hat and leave. Dye his hair after the number back to blond. His hair is so screwed up now it’s orange.” O’Connor did not explain the reference to “number.”

After six weeks, Malley moved, to a University City apartment complex. Meanwhile, as the number of robberies kept climbing, a song was written about the A’s Bandit. A newspaper devoted a story to his taste in clothing. Friday morning, the A’s Bandit case was featured on National Public Radio and on a CBS radio show.

“This is a very ordinary guy who should not be anybody’s cult hero, as far as I’m concerned, even on the dark side of cults,” Johnson said. Authorities speculated Friday that the bandit might have a drug habit. They said Monday that Malley does not.

Kelly said Monday that law enforcement officials now believe the robberies simply provided the bandit’s room, board and spending money.

The robber’s standard practice involved returning to banks near those he already had hit, FBI agent Kelly said. Last Wednesday, the bandit struck at the California Federal Bank branch at 7728 Regents Road, police said.

Most of the robberies were on a Friday. So, last Friday, the FBI and San Diego police were carefully watching the San Diego Trust & Savings branch at 7708 Regents Road, Kelly said. The bandit struck at 1:40 p.m., making off with $496, police said.

As he fled, the robber apparently dropped a checkbook, according to federal court papers filed Monday. Inside, according to the papers, were Malley’s personalized checks, a photo identification card and his temporary California driver’s license.

Two and a half hours later, after tracking Malley to his University City address, police arrested him there. Officers also recovered a weapon. “It was not a gun, and that’s as far as I’ll go,” Johnson said.

At a curbside lineup, the teller from the San Diego Trust & Savings bank who handed over the $496 identified Malley as the robber, according to the federal court papers.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Pat O’Toole, the prosecutor in the case, said it could be weeks before the FBI seeks formally to link Malley to the other 28 robberies. O’Toole said agents would be checking demand notes from the holdups for fingerprints.

Times staff writer Monica Rodriguez contributed to this story.