A 62-year-old well-known Bay Area chef is in custody after he reportedly robbed three San Francisco banks in a single day last week, according to multiple media reports.
Prior to his short-lived career as a bank robber, Chef Valentino Luchin worked as the executive chef at Rose Pistola in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. Later, he opened Ottavio Osteria in Walnut Creek, where he worked as owner and head chef before it shuttered in 2016.
On Sept. 10, officers with the San Francisco Police Department responded to a robbery activation made at bank in the 1100 block of Grant Avenue just after 12 p.m.
“Upon arrival, officers learned that the male suspect entered the business and passed a note to an employee demanding money. Fearing for their safety, the employee complied and provided the suspect with a bag of U.S. currency,” an SFPD news release stated. “The suspect then fled from the area with the money.”
Investigators did not say how much he got away with.
Luchin was identified as the suspect, at least in part, by tips that came from the community, investigators said.
While officers formed a strategic plant to take the 62-year-old resident of the city’s Central District into custody, it was learned that two additional banks in the Central District were robbed the same day with a similar suspect description and style of robbery.
“Officers determined that the suspect who committed these robberies was Luchin,” police said.
The former chef was apprehended and arrested without incident, KTLA’s sister-station KRON4 reported. He was booked into the San Francisco County Jail and is facing multiple robbery charges.
It’s not the first time the chef has dabbled in robbing banks, though, again, unsuccessfully.
In 2018, he was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery at a bank in Orinda, an affluent suburban city in Contra Costa County approximately 17 miles from San Francisco.
“At the time, I thought it was a good plan,” the then 54-year-old chef said in a jailhouse interview with the East Bay Times not long after the incident. “But it was not.”
In that instance, the Italian born chef, reportedly entered a Citibank with a fake gun and made off with $18,000 in cash. He was arrested hours later at a health club near his home.
During the same jailhouse interview with the East Bay Times, Luchin said it was the 2016 closure of Ottavio that prompted years of financial problems.
“Everything went downhill,” he told the outlet. “Everything became more complicated.”
He expressed his regret and told the interviewer he felt “very sorry” for his actions during the incident, saying the robbery he hadn’t been aggressive during the robbery and that it had not planned for a long time.
When asked his reason for robbing the bank, he took a moment before saying, “S**t happens.”
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