PHOENIX - The FBI is looking for a man who robbed the Arizona Federal Credit Union in Glendale.
They are calling him the “Packing Pigeon Bandit,” for no other reason than he showed up packing a pistol and appears to be walking pigeon-toed.
These types of names are common for the FBI Bank Robbery Task Force.
“Naming bank robbers is a tradition in the FBI that goes back a long way,” said FBI Special Agent Lance Leising.
"We kind of enjoy naming the bank robbers. It's kind of fun -- we pass it around," Leising said. "It's a team effort in our squad area. We don't accept them all but the ones we do accept usually identify a certain trait the bank robber has."
For instance, the FBI is also currently looking for a man they call the “Goldeneye Bandit.” His name has nothing to do with the James Bond Film, but rather because he was seen wearing gold-rimmed glasses in surveillance photos.
“You know somebody looks like the picture but they're not sure. Then they see the gold-rimmed glasses and remember,” Leising said.
Naming bank robbers might seem like a useless activity around the FBI water cooler, but it works. The solution rate for finding bank robbers in Phoenix is 80 percent, meaning 8 out of 10 people who successfully rob a bank end up in jail.
So what’s in a name? Maybe more than you think.