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Cookin’ up some crime.
A famend California chef has been arrested for allegedly pulling off three financial institution robberies in at some point in San Francisco final week.
Valentino Luchin, 62 — the previous govt chef at beloved Italian restaurant Rose Pistola in San Fran — struck three completely different banks throughout San Francisco on Sept. 10 by passing handwritten notes to the tellers demanding cash, in keeping with the San Francisco Police Division.
Officers responded to a theft at a financial institution close to Grant Avenue in Chinatown round 12 p.m.
Upon arrival, one of many tellers knowledgeable police that the suspect had handed her a notice demanding money, and, out of concern for his or her security, she had complied.
After being handed over a bag of money, the suspect fled. Officers didn’t reveal how a lot cash he managed to steal.
An investigation launched by town’s Theft Unit shortly recognized Luchin because the suspected financial institution robber.
Cops tied the Italian-born chef to 2 extra Central District financial institution heists that very same day after recognizing similarities within the suspect’s description and theft type.
Authorities additionally acknowledged that members of the SFPD’s “ambassadors” program and group ideas contributed to their identification of Luchin because the suspected financial institution robber.
“Officers decided that the suspect who dedicated these robberies was Luchin,” police stated.
Police then “formulated a strategic plan that led to Luchin’s apprehension with out additional incident.”
Luchin was arrested later that very same day in reference to the three financial institution robberies, with out incident, and booked into the San Francisco County Jail.
He has been charged with two counts of theft and one rely of tried theft. The previous chef stays in custody whereas awaiting formal fees.
This isn’t the primary time the chef and former proprietor of Ottavio in Walnut Creek, which closed its doorways for good in 2016, has been accused of robbing a financial institution.
Luchin was arrested for allegedly robbing a Citibank in Orinda, California, the place $18,000 was stolen in 2018, East Bay Occasions reported.
Safety footage caught a hooded man in darkish shades and white gloves armed with a BB gun.
Following his arrest, Luchin advised the outlet in a jailhouse interview that he resorted to robbing the financial institution out of “desperation” over the collapse of Ottavio.
“I believed it was a very good plan, but it surely was not,” he stated, including that he by no means deliberate to harm anybody.
“My motion wasn’t aggressive. It was a faux gun. I don’t even know the right way to load an actual gun.”
Luchin claimed that he wrote an apology letter to the teller he allegedly threatened. It’s unclear if he was ever charged in reference to the theft.
Born in Italy’s Veneto area, Luchin immigrated to the US in 1993 and shortly turned a rising star within the culinary world.
Nonetheless, after Walnut Creek was shut down, leaving him with a considerable monetary burden, he stated his life started spiraling uncontrolled.
“All the things went downhill,” Luchin advised East Bay Occasions. “All the things turned extra difficult.”
“Desperation leads you to do stuff you by no means thought you had been able to,” he added.
Chapter information from 2015, obtained by the outlet, revealed that Luchin and his spouse had fallen behind on their Chapter 13 plan, with greater than $111,000 in debt and solely $27,000 in property to their title.
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