Tattoo Shop Foils Alleged Bank Robber

OCEAN CITY, N.J. - This doesn't happen every day. A South Jersey man wanted for two bank robberies walked into a tattoo parlor and allegedly confessed.

How often does that happen, especially to a complete stranger? But apparently the young man was scared and he thought he wouldn't get much jail time because it was a first offense, reported Fox 29's Robin Taylor.

The nervous young man came into a Northfield tattoo parlor asking for his deposit back. When Anthony McElhinney asked why, the 19-year-old told him he'd just robbed a couple banks.

"He told me one bank, $2500, and the other bank, $500. I asked him ‘What's the point? and he goes, ‘Well, I don't know. Just something to do,’” recalls Anthony McElhinney of Dreamline Ink.

But it hadn't turned out the way Robert Champion had expected, because surveillance cameras captured him in the act.

"He just told me he wrote it on a bank slip and he walked up to the teller and said ‘Give me this money, I'm robbing your bank,’” tells McElhinney.

After one of the robberies, Champion allegedly came in to get a tattoo, but the artists at Dreamline Ink were booked, so he made an appointment to come back.

"He came in, he was well-dressed. He had a nice haircut. He didn't look like somebody that allegedly just robbed a bank or anything. There was no clues to that,” says tattoo artist Vinnie Ferragame.

After his picture showed up in the paper, he realized he probably was going to jail, so he asked for his money back.

"As he walked outside, I looked at his license plate and I got in and called the cops and told them the license plate number and the car he was driving,” says McElhinney.

Police made the arrest about 20 minutes later.

What's ironic, the tattoo was to say: "Champion."

"I guess he didn't live up to his name, you know,” says Ferragame.

Linwood police charged Champion with bank robbery and theft. He's being held in the Atlantic County Jail on $200,000 bail.