A man walked into a bank.
He handed the teller a note.
A half-hour later, he walked into another bank and did the same thing. The next day, it happened twice more, the police say. After taking a couple of days off, he visited two more banks.
The man, the police say, was trying to rob the banks — six Chase branches in five days, spread across Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. The notes, they said, stated that people would get hurt if the teller did not hand over money, though the man did not say that he was armed.
On two occasions, the police say, the man was modestly successful, getting away with $320 from a branch in Jackson Heights, Queens, last Friday and $265 from one on Nostrand Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Saturday.
At a bank on West 125th Street in Harlem on Tuesday, he walked out with $20, the police said.
On the other three occasions, a news release from the Police Department states, “the individual did not obtain any money and fled on foot to parts unknown.” Those three banks were in Long Island City, Queens, on Friday; Downtown Brooklyn, on Saturday; and the South Bronx on Tuesday.
The police identified the suspect as Gustavo DeJesus Torres, 33, and released several security-camera photographs of him, a balding man with a beard and no mustache. (During at least some of the robberies and attempted robberies, he wore a mask, the police said.)
In one of the surveillance photos, taken on Saturday during the 57-minute interval between the unsuccessful robbery of the branch on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn and the robbery of the $265 from the branch in Flatbush, the suspect is seen standing on a subway platform, holding a coffee cup, frowning, looking like any other harried commuter.
Mr. Torres may have a history in this field. In June 2021, a man with the same name who was then 29 was arrested in New Jersey and charged with robbing a Chase Bank branch in the Newark suburb of Belleville, according to a newspaper article at the time. The man wore a mask, handed the teller a note that read, “I’m heavily armed don’t make a scene,” and escaped with $6,000. It was not clear what the outcome of that case was.
And last month, Mr. Torres was arrested on charges that he robbed a TD Bank in TriBeCa in April 2025, the police said. On that occasion, they said, he made off with $600.
Samantha Latson contributed reporting.
Andy Newman has reported from the New York region for The Times for more than 30 years.
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