A popular bank robber and novelist has been arrested for allegedly staging another robbery attempt on a financial institution on March 12.
Detroit’s Dorian Sykes made his recent getaway in a white Rolls Royce SUV, only to be arrested at an MGM Grand Hotel where he had been reportedly living for free using vouchers, cops said.
41-year-old Sykes was planning to celebrate his recent novel’s release with Urban Books when he was nabbed for the March 12 heist.
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Sykes is accused of entering the Chase Bank in Lathrup Village, a suburb of Detroit, and handing a teller a withdrawal slip with the words: “Give me all the money, I have a gun…I will kill everyone in here”, per the criminal complaint.
The teller, who appeared terrified, gave him over $3,400 in cash, and surveillance footage captured Skyles fleeing with the dough in a flashy vehicle, police said.
The popular bank robber was still on parole after his release from federal prison in February 2024 for another bank robbery he was arrested and later convicted of back in 2020.
Soon after, FBI investigators discovered from Sykes’ probation officer that he was living lavishly at the hotel, staked him out and nabbed him in his Rolls.
Also, Sykes was charged with a different robbery in Sterling Heights that unfolded six days earlier in which $10,169 in cash was stolen.
“Sykes’s history paints a troubling and unmistakable picture of a person who has a complete disregard for the law,” said Assistant US Attorney Frances Carlson in a sentencing memorandum in late 2020.
The now-arrested popular bank robber has published nine novels with Urban Books, a company out of the Big Apple run by New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber.
Weber said to Detroit News that he was slightly familiar with Sykes, revealing that each of his novels sold as many as 2,500 copies.
“He’s pretty small fry, to be honest,” Weber said. “He wouldn’t be in this situation if he was” a more successful author.
Now, Sykes will celebrate the release of his new book “Born To Die”, which is set to be released next month in prison.
The novel cover reportedly features a dapper gentleman decked out in gangster couture standing over a table with loads of cocaine and a rolled up hundred dollar bill to snort it.
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Dorian Skyles could even find some inspiration for his next book from the March 12 crime, knowing he will likely spend the next years in prison.
