The old man in the dark suit ambled into the St. Petersburg bank a little before closing time. A teller noticed his wrinkled cheeks and bulbous nose were part of a mask.
Donning gloves and carrying a black bag with a cross strap, he passed a note demanding cash. Minutes later, he sprinted away with less than $3,000.
By the time police and federal agents arrived, they already had an idea of who was behind the crime. The same masked man, they confirmed, had robbed a bank in Largo weeks earlier.
Within days, they searched two St. Petersburg homes and collected clothing similar to what the robber wore. In a bedroom of one house, they found what was described in a criminal complaint as a journal. It bore the name “David Sartin” and the title: “God’s Best friend is a Bank Robber!”
Sartin, 40, now sits in the Pinellas County Jail facing bank robbery charges. This is the third time in his life he’s been accused of bank heists, having previously done federal prison time for the same crime.
Whether he is guilty will be for the federal courts, and potentially a jury, to decide. But his past and court records in his case offer insight into a crime that is much less common than it once was.
The vanishing American bank robber
Who robs banks anymore? Not many people, according to the FBI.
In 2023, the most recent year for which statistics are readily available, the FBI tallied 1,362 bank robberies nationwide. Go back 20 years to 2003 and the total was 7,644.
The bulk of those sums includes traditional robberies, but also bank burglaries and thefts, which number in the low hundreds.
What accounts for the decline?
Undoubtedly, one factor is that it’s harder to rob a bank nowadays and not get caught.
Most banks use sophisticated security systems with video surveillance and silent alarms. Some employ armed security officers. Tellers are trained to give robbers what’s known as bait money — bills whose serial numbers have been recorded so they can be tracked and linked to a suspect. Occasionally, bank employees slip a dye pack in with the stolen funds, a device rigged to explode after the robber leaves, covering the money in ink.
A little more than half of 2023’s bank robberies were note jobs, in which the robber passes a written message demanding cash, according to FBI data.
Although robbers frequently imply that they have a gun, weapons were used in just a little more than a third of all robberies.
Mostly gone are the days of Bonnie-and-Clyde-style takeover robberies, wherein criminals seize control of the bank itself. The FBI classified less than 5% of all bank robberies in 2023 as “takeovers.”
Successful heists typically don’t yield much money, likely another factor that contributes to their decline.
When a masked man strolled into Valley Bank in Largo in August and demanded cash, he ran out with $2,900.
‘Get the cash in the bag’
Valley Bank sits in a two-story modern edifice surrounded by palm trees and well-manicured landscaping along busy East Bay Drive in Largo.
It’s next door to what was once a big-box store, but now houses Grace Family Church. On Aug. 24, a little before 1:30 p.m., surveillance cameras behind the church captured images of a man riding a bicycle. He wore a straw hat, a sport jacket over a green button-up shirt, jeans and black Nikes. He moved west, then north before parking the bike along a fence line.
He walked into the bank and went straight to a middle counter. His thin-bearded face, a teller later said, seemed like a prosthetic. He demanded “all the money,” according to a criminal complaint, and warned “no dye packs.”
“Hurry up,” he said repeatedly. The teller grabbed cash from a drawer. Five $50 bills had recorded serial numbers. Amid the hustle, a silent alarm tripped.
The man fidgeted under his coat before revealing a cross strap for a bag.
“I am good now,” he said. “Get the cash in the bag.”
He collected the bills and stuffed them under his coat, dropping one.
“Until we meet again,” he said.
As he left, the man wedged a yellow plastic “wet floor” sign in the bank’s front doors.
Witnesses saw him sprinting east toward Grace Family Church. He grabbed the bicycle and rode south.
He moved swiftly into the Largo Central Park Nature Preserve. A little ways into the park, he stopped at a gravel driveway beside a wood fence. A black Toyota FJ Cruiser with a white top sat parked there. He got in and drove off.
Police and FBI agents canvassed the area for surveillance video. They became interested in footage captured about 90 minutes before the robbery at a RaceTrac gas station next to the church.
The same Toyota SUV that would later be seen in the Nature Preserve pulled up to the RaceTrac before noon. A man wearing white earbuds, who appeared to be making a phone call, got out and used the restroom in the store. He wore a T-shirt, shorts and running shoes. He had tattooed arms. A cap covered his long hair, which was tied back in a ponytail.
They followed the SUV on video as it left the RaceTrac and wound through the Grace Family Church parking lot before entering the nature preserve.
Shortly thereafter, cameras picked up the man in the straw hat riding the bicycle toward the bank.
Investigators assembled a collection of additional videos from businesses, a school bus, even a police car, that showed the SUV again riding past the RaceTrac after the robbery before heading south into St. Petersburg.
A Flock camera at 66th Street North and Bryan Dairy Road caught the Toyota’s license plate.
It was registered to David Sartin Sr., according to a criminal complaint. His son, they would learn, was on federal probation.
A repeat suspect
One early Monday morning, almost exactly 20 years before the Largo robbery, David Sartin Jr. pulled a Halloween mask over his face and stepped across a concrete driveway outside BankPlus in tiny Stonewall, Mississippi.
He and another masked man accosted a bank employee as she arrived at work. Sartin pointed a gun at her head, according to court records, and demanded to be let in. The doors were locked. The employee said she had no key. Another employee saw what was happening and set off an alarm.
Sartin and the other man fled. But both were arrested within hours amid a manhunt. A third man, said to be the getaway driver, was found days later.
At 20, Sartin was then living in Meridian, a small city roughly a half-hour north of the BankPlus. Thereafter, he entered a federal courtroom for the first time as a defendant.
He later pleaded guilty to attempted armed robbery and received a little more than three years in prison. After he got out, he moved to Texas.
Within a few years, he became a suspect once again.
In the summer of 2016, police and federal agents probed a five-bank robbery spree in and around the city of San Antonio, Texas. In each case, the robber entered the bank wearing what was described as an “old man” mask.
Each time, the robber handed tellers a note demanding “large bills” and saying he had a gun. In at least one case, he showed a gun tucked under his coat. In another, he threatened a teller, saying, “Do you want to die?”
In all, he stole more than $30,000.
During the fifth robbery, a teller slipped an electronic tracking device in with the money. It led investigators to Sartin’s apartment. He was arrested as he got out of his car.
His roommate, Jason Hathorn, arrived shortly thereafter carrying a blue bag and saw the arrest. He went to the apartment complex’s recreation room and tried to hide the bag in a sofa, according to court records. When police later seized it, they found inside an old-man mask, hats the robber had worn and more than $8,000 in stolen funds. They also found a note reading: “I need all in the bag. I have a gun.”
Hathorn was found to have exchanged text messages with Sartin during the robberies. Both men were convicted of robbery charges. Sartin was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
About midway through his sentence, he wrote a letter to a judge asking to be released. The COVID-19 pandemic was raging and the virus had made its way into the Talladega federal prison in Mississippi. He worried that his confinement could be a “death sentence.”
He wrote that he had been working a prison job, had no disciplinary record and planned to move in with his father in St. Petersburg and do home remodeling. He also planned to stay involved in church.
“I pose no risk to society upon release,” he wrote.
A judge denied his request. He completed his prison sentence in May 2025, records show.
The ‘old man’ returns in Pinellas County
For weeks after the Valley Bank robbery, police and the FBI watched Sartin. They set up a covert camera near his girlfriend’s house on 62nd Street North.
On Sept. 15, the old man struck again. His target this time was a Truist branch off 62nd Street between Central Avenue and First Avenue South in St. Petersburg. Once again, he used a note. Once again, he took the cash and sprinted away.
Fifty minutes later, the covert camera recorded Sartin pulling up in the Toyota SUV. He got out, opened the rear hatch, took out a bicycle and wheeled it inside, according to the complaint. The next day, agents quietly watched as Sartin removed the SUV’s roof rack. He spray-painted the vehicle’s roof black, the complaint states.
Investigators learned that in the time between the robberies, Sartin had been arrested for theft from a Walmart in South Carolina, according to court records. He also was issued a speeding citation in July while driving the Toyota near Jacksonville.
The trips were a violation of his release conditions. On Sept. 19, he was arrested. Thereafter, agents searched the homes of his girlfriend and his father.
They seized the journal, which bore a date of Jan. 1, 2021. Its subtitle read “Uncle Henry Cops and Robbers the world through the eyes of a Bank Robber.”
One page bore a drawing of a character holding up a mask, according to the complaint.
“My face holding up Uncle Henry,” read a caption. “Looking at it. Face to Face.”
In a monitored jail visit with his father, investigators heard Sartin reference a storage facility in St. Petersburg. They later located and searched a unit he’d rented. Inside, they found clothing similar to what the robber wore. They also found an old-man mask.
In an email exchange with a Tampa Bay Times reporter, Sartin said he would need to speak with his attorney before commenting for this story. Assistant Federal Defender Julia Seifer-Smith later said Sartin would not be able to talk because of the circumstances of his pending case.
In his message, though, Sartin hinted that there is more to be told about who he is.
“I deff have a story,” he wrote. “Even with something so negative, there is something still very human and beautiful in it.”
