SACRAMENTO—The young woman accused of five bank robberies this summer has now appeared in court, and is set to return on Friday, October 30.
Dominique Polani, 22, faces five counts of second-degree robbery and has been jailed since she was arrested in July on suspicion of a series of Sacramento-area bank holdups that took place on July 1, 9, 14 and 15. The second-degree charge is standard when no one gets hurt.
Surveillance image of Polani in action.
Sacramento County prosecutors says Polani held up Bank of the West, Citibank and Chase Bank branches in Carmichael, Rosemont and the Arden Arcade area. Security camera images from one of these banks shows Polani at the teller’s counter in a baseball cap and wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses.
In each of these incidents, she allegedly slipped notes to tellers saying she was armed and demanded cash. She was captured in the Bakersfield area on the evening of Friday, July 17, after detectives were able to identify her and obtain a search warrant.
Polani’s defense attorney, Marcus Wiggins, says Polani was “an unwilling participant in this enterprise” and maintains she was coerced into the robberies. “She got mixed up with the wrong crowd,” Polani’s father, Joe, told the media. “Other than that she is happy, likes to please people and always has a smile on her face.”
Polani remains held in lieu of $250,000 bail at Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove.
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