Man fakes kidnapping to get drug money from bank: Police

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A man convinced a bank teller to give him $2,000 after pretending to have been kidnapped and held hostage, police say.

The suspect’s wife told police that the entire charade was for crack cocaine.

On Monday, the Memphis Police Department received a call from a bank employee at the First South Financial Credit Union on Madison Avenue.

The woman told officers that there was a customer inside the bank who claimed he was being held hostage and was being forced to withdraw money from banks for his kidnappers.

Reports say the man first entered the bank around 10 a.m. and tried to withdraw $2,000 from his joint bank account, but the teller told him that his wife had withdrawn the money from the account earlier that morning.

The man left the bank in a grey Yukon and returned later that day.

He allegedly asked the teller to call his wife so that she would return the money to their account. He also asked the woman to call the police and claimed to be held hostage by two kidnappers in the Yukon outside.

Police say he told the bank employee that he would be harmed if he did not give the kidnappers $2,000. The employee gave him the money and the man left the bank.

Officers arrived on the scene as the suspect was walking out of the building. The man, identified as Mark Hamilton, was detained on the scene, and the driver of the Yukon fled.

After speaking with Hamilton’s wife, police say it became clear that the kidnapping was a hoax and all of the money would be spent on crack cocaine.

She allegedly told police that she withdrew all of the money from their bank account earlier that morning because her husband was a drug addict. Police were also informed that the other man in the Yukon was his crack dealer.

The Yukon was later found at a home in Parkway Village and was released to the suspect’s wife.

Police say Hamilton also claimed to have attempted the same scheme at a Navy Federal in Millington.

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