Friday, September 23, 2005 Posted: 2149 GMT (0549 HKT)
DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- Two Australian men whose bumbling robbery of a bank earned them the nicknames "Dumb and Dumber" were sentenced to prison Friday by a federal judge who said even an inept bank robbery is a serious crime.
Anthony Prince, 20, was sentenced to 41/2 years and Luke Carroll, 19, was sentenced to five years, and they were ordered to pay combined restitution of $21,657.
They pleaded guilty in June to the March robbery of a bank in Vail.
Both men, who came to the United States from Australia last fall to work in the resort town, expressed regret and remorse for their actions and apologized to the two bank tellers who were on duty when they used unloaded BB guns to make away with $129,500.
"What I did was greedy and selfish but I'm still not sure why I did it," Prince said.
Carroll's sentence was longer because he threw one of the bank tellers to the floor.
Carroll and Prince were dubbed "Dumb and Dumber" by the media after details of the robbery surfaced.
Witnesses said the men, childhood friends from the northern coast of New South Wales, had distinct accents and wore badges similar to ones worn by staff at the ski shop where Prince and Carroll worked. Vail ski resort employees told police Carroll and Prince used their ski passes to board a chair lift about one-quarter mile from the bank within minutes of the robbery.
Investigators soon found mug shots of Carroll and Prince, who were arrested in January for allegedly shooting out windows with a paintball gun, and distributed their photos on an FBI flier.
A day after the robbery, the teens drove to Denver International Airport and tried to buy one-way tickets to Mexico with about $1,150 of the stolen cash, authorities said. Told they couldn't, they opted for round-trip fares. A police officer recognized the teens from the flier -- and from their accents -- and arrested them as they tried to pass through airport security.
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