Ex-dentist pleads guilty to ‘rolled-sleeves bandit’ bank robberies

A former Newport Beach dentist admitted in court Monday that he robbed seven banks along the Southern California coast, according to federal prosecutors.

As part of an agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office, Damian Newhart, 41, pleaded guilty to three counts of bank robbery and will face a maximum of 60 years in prison and fines up to $250,000 when he is sentenced.

A sentencing date was not immediately available. Newhart is in federal custody in Los Angeles in the meantime, according to prison records.

The FBI dubbed him the “rolled-sleeves bandit” because he often wore button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up during the crimes.

Before he started holding up banks, Newhart was a dentist in Orange County. But he lost his license in July because he had been writing illegal prescriptions for powerful painkillers to feed his habitual use of the drugs, according to the Dental Board of California.

Four months later, Newhart began his robbery spree, according to federal authorities.

The first heist was in Hermosa Beach, where he entered a OneWest Bank and showed a teller a note that read “I have a gun. No dye packs and no bait,” according to federal court documents. He walked out with $1,674 in cash, according to the charges.

Newhart admitted in the plea agreement that he followed a similar pattern when he robbed six other banks in Orange and Los Angeles counties, netting more than $21,000 from branches in Huntington Beach, Manhattan Beach and Santa Monica.

Newhart was arrested in January at a dental office in Inglewood. Authorities said they had received a tip about his whereabouts when someone recognized him from bank security footage publicized by the FBI.

In 2013, the Orange County district attorney’s office charged Newhart with 45 counts of forging or altering prescriptions. He agreed to plead guilty to one count and received a sentence of 90 days in jail and five years’ probation, according to court records.

The conviction prompted the dental board to investigate.

According to its decision revoking his license to practice, Newhart admitted that he had become addicted to Vicodin and written himself a prescription.

Newhart also prescribed himself Viagra, wrote fraudulent prescriptions for patients and prescribed drugs to his daughter when he was actually taking the pills himself, according to the dental board.