CLINTON — A 39-year-old Australian man wanted by the FBI for robbing a bank on New Year’s Eve was arrested by Clinton police after they received a tip on the man’s location.
Clinton police arrested Corey Allen Donaldson and booked him in the Davis County Jail on federal bank robbery charges on Tuesday.
Clinton Police Chief Bill Chilson said a man called dispatch and said, “This guy is (at my door) and he doesn’t think I’m home. He’s wanted for a bank robbery.”
That tip led police to the possible location of Donalsdon. A few minutes later, Clinton police officers performed a traffic stop on a car in which Donaldson was a passenger and arrested him without incident. Donaldson had hired the car from a transport service to drive him around the area, Chilson said.
“We had information he was wanted by Jackson (police),” said Chilson, who added that Clinton police were working with the Jackson Police Department out of Wyoming on the case.
Donaldson appeared on Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Warner in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on a detention hearing to be sent back to Wyoming to face the bank robbery charges.
The U.S. Bank in Jackson, Wyo., was robbed during lunchtime on Dec. 31. Jackson police and Teton County Sheriff’s deputies were on the scene within two minutes after receiving a call that a bank robbery was in progress, according to a wanted post on the department’s website.
Jackson Police Lt. Cole Nethercott said in a phone interview that officers on Tuesday recovered $16,000 of the $140,000 taken from the bank’s vault.
“Without going into a lot of detail, this was not the typical ‘go in and demand cash’ robbery,” Nethercott said.
The man who robbed the bank had left in a Toyota Tundra. Police spent countless hours viewing video from local businesses and “hit pay dirt,” Nethercott said. A surveillance video showed the vehicle and clearly showed the license plate. Officers identified the vehicle from that information.
When police contacted the truck’s owner in Clinton, the owner said he had loaned the truck to Donaldson several months ago, but Donaldson had not returned it.
“Because they were friends, he didn’t want to report the truck as stolen. But he decided after we talked to him to report it as stolen,” Nethercott said.
Police also learned the vehicle had crossed the Canadian border into the United States sometime in the later part of 2012, according to the news release.
Wyoming police said border control officials took a photograph of the truck and the driver that matched the bank surveillance footage.
On Jan. 18, police made a positive identification of the man who robbed the U.S. Bank and had a federal warrant issued for the arrest of Donaldson.
Donaldson’s last known address was in Sandy, Nethercott said. Police did not let the public know about Donaldson because they were fearful he would either leave the U.S. or become violent.
The truck was found in central California, Nethercott said.
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