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Michel Barrera (born March 1980) is an American fugitive wanted for bank robbery, attempted murder of law enforcement officers and shooting at the police during a high speed chase. He is also wanted for questioning by police in the murder of Randi Gorenberg in 2007. [1] The crimes for which Barrera is wanted took place in the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. [2]
In February 1998, Michel Barrera robbed a bank with an accomplice. They robbed the bank of just over $20,000 (equivalent to $33,250in 2021) .
Three months later, on May 1, 1998, Barrera and his accomplice drove to the National Republic Bank in Miami. The two men exited the stolen car and entered the bank. After the robbery was over, the two men got into the stolen vehicle. A police officer then started following them. Barrera fired a shotgun multiple times at the officer. [3] Later that day, Barrera and his accomplice ditched the stolen car; they then stole another vehicle from a man.
The accomplice in the bank robbery was arrested by Miami-Dade police. [4] Barrera, though, managed to evade police. He later disappeared.
Almost nine years later in March 2007, a 52-year-old woman, Randi Gorenberg, was kidnapped not long after leaving the Town Center Mall in Boca Raton, Florida on the afternoon of Friday, March 23. [5] The abductor drove Gorenberg to the South County Civic Center, shot her and tossed her body from the passenger side of her Mercedes SUV. At the time of the Gorenberg murder, Barrera owned a four door Chrysler 300. An informant told the PBSO that gang members might have assisted in the Gorenberg killing. [6]
Barrera became a person of interest after Randi Gorenberg was killed. He was featured on the show America's Most Wanted multiple times. [7] Barrera was also associated with the MS-13 street gang.
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a train, armored car, or (historically) stagecoach. It is a federal crime in the United States.
Harry "Pete" Pierpont was a Prohibition era gangster, convicted murderer and bank robber. He was a friend and mentor to John Dillinger.
Donald Eugene Webb was an American career criminal wanted for attempted burglary and the murder of police chief Gregory Adams in the small town of Saxonburg, Pennsylvania on December 4, 1980. It was only the second murder in the town's nearly 150-year history; the first murder occurred in 1942.
The M25 Three were Michael George Davis, and Randolph Egbert Johnson, who were jailed for life at the Old Bailey in March 1990 after being convicted for murder and burglary. The name was taken from the location of the crimes, which were committed around the M25, London's orbital motorway, during the early hours of 16 December 1988. The original trial took place between January and February 1990, resulting in all three being convicted of the murder of Peter Hurburgh, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Timothy Napier and several robberies. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and given substantial sentences for the other offences. The convictions were overturned in July 2000. All three men have consistently maintained their innocence.
The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978. An estimated $5.875 million was stolen, with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry, making it the largest cash robbery committed on American soil at the time.
The West End Gang is a Canadian organized crime group in Montreal, Quebec. An Irish mob group originating from the Irish-Canadian ethnic enclave of Pointe-Saint-Charles in the 1950s, the majority of the gang's earnings were initially derived from truck hijackings, home invasions, kidnapping, protection rackets, extortion, and armed robbery, with its criminal activities focused on, but not restricted to, the west side of Montreal. The West End Gang came to prominence via a series of high-profile bank robberies between the 1950s and the 1970s, a period when Montreal was known as "Bank Robbery capital of North America". Due to the gang's control of illegal activity at the Port of Montreal, it moved into drug trafficking and became one of the most influential criminal organizations in Canada.
In 1952, the United States FBI, under Director J. Edgar Hoover, continued for a third year to maintain a public list of the people it regarded as the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
Edward James Adams was a notorious American criminal and spree killer in the Midwest. He murdered seven people–including three policemen—over a period of around 14 months, and wounded at least a dozen others. At age 34, Adams was surrounded and then killed by police in Wichita, Kansas.
Gerald Chapman, known as "The Count of Gramercy Park", "The Gentleman Bandit", and "Gentleman Gerald", was an American criminal who helped lead an early Prohibition-era gang from 1919 until the mid-1920s. His nicknames came from his ability to pose as a member of the wealthy elite, which allowed him to fool potential victims and avoid scrutiny from investigators. Chapman was the first criminal to be dubbed "Public Enemy Number One" by the press.
David Anthony Mack is a former professional runner and Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer involved in the Rampart Division's Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit. He was one of the central figures in the LAPD Rampart police corruption scandal. Mack was arrested in December 1997 for robbery of $722,000 from a South Central Los Angeles branch of the Bank of America. He was sentenced to fourteen years and three months in federal prison. Mack has never revealed the whereabouts of the money.
George Leonidas Leslie (1842–1878) was an architect turned bank robber.
Lawrence DeVol was an American criminal, bank robber, prison escapee and Depression-era outlaw. He was connected to several Midwestern gangs during the 1920s and 1930s, most often with the Barker-Alvin Karpis and Holden-Keating Gangs, and was also a former partner of Harvey Bailey early in his criminal career. DeVol is known to have killed at least eleven people during his criminal career, including six law enforcement officers.
The Holden-Keating Gang was a bank robbing team, led by Thomas James Holden (1896–1953) and Francis Keating, which was active in the Midwestern United States from 1926 to 1932. Holden was described by a spokesman for the FBI as "a menace to every man, woman and child in America" and was the first fugitive to be officially listed on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List in 1950.
Frederick Grant Dunn (1905–1959) was an American criminal, burglar and bank robber whose career spanned over four decades from 1919 until his mysterious death in 1959. He led a small gang during the 1940s and 1950s, Dunn becoming referred to by the press as "the modern John Dillinger", and whose activities eventually resulted in his being listed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted in 1958.
Fred William Bowerman was an American bank robber and Depression-era outlaw.
John Hopkin Ashley was an American outlaw, bank robber, bootlegger, and occasional pirate active in southern Florida during the 1910s and 1920s. Between 1915 and 1924, the self-styled "King of the Everglades" or "Swamp Bandit" operated from various hideouts in the Florida Everglades. His gang robbed nearly $1 million from at least 40 banks while at the same time hijacking numerous shipments of illegal whiskey being smuggled into the state from the Bahamas. Indeed, Ashley's gang was so effective that rum-running on the Florida coast virtually ceased while the gang was active. His two-man raid on the West End in the Bahamas in 1924 marked the first time in over a century that American pirates had attacked a British Crown colony.
Santiago "Pucho" Villalba Mederos is an American former fugitive who was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on September 25, 2017. He was wanted for two murders in Tacoma, Washington, in 2010. Mederos was the 515th fugitive to be placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The FBI offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to his capture. He was captured in Tenancingo, Mexico, on June 5, 2020.
Thomas Otis Knight was an American fugitive who was executed in Florida for murder. In 1974, Knight murdered a Miami couple after forcing them to withdraw $50,000 USD from a bank. While awaiting trial, Knight and ten other inmates escaped from jail and went on a crime spree, during which he murdered a store clerk in an armed robbery. He was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on December 12, 1974, and was captured on December 31, 1974.
The Lincoln National Bank robbery took place on September 17, 1930 when a group of armed men entered a bank in Lincoln, Nebraska, stole approximately $2.7 million in cash and securities, and then fled with help of a getaway driver. No one was seriously injured during the robbery. The majority of the money was never recovered.
Gonzalo Artemio Lopez was an American fugitive, mass murderer, and prison escapee who killed a total of six people in separate murders in 2005 and 2022. In 2005, Lopez kidnapped and murdered a man in Weslaco, Texas. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. In May 2022, Lopez received international attention when he escaped from prison custody by assaulting a corrections officer and fleeing from a prison bus. He became a wanted fugitive and evaded authorities for three weeks. On June 2, Lopez broke into a ranch and murdered five people from the same family, including three children, before stealing weapons and a pickup truck. Later that same day, police spotted Lopez and engaged in a shootout with him after a high-speed chase, where he was fatally shot during the exchange of gunfire.