Broward bank jobs terrorize customers - Bank robbers kept cops busy Thursday as detectives searched for the criminals

Bank robbers stormed two Broward banks yesterday -- one in Tamarac, the other in Pembroke Pines -- making off with bags of loot after terrorizing customers and bank tellers.

Marjorie Rigaud was among the customers at the Washington Mutual bank in Tamarac who was inside the bank during the holdup Thursday morning.

"The guys came in and told everybody to lay on the floor," said Rigaud, 41, of Lauderhill. "We were crying and trembling. I'm still shaken."

According to the Broward Sheriff's Office, a pair of gunmen wearing masks and dressed in black entered the bank at 6001 N. University Dr. and ordered more than two dozen customers and employees to hit the floor. A bank employee was told to open the vault, and the thieves fled with two money bags.

An alarm went off at 10:26 a.m.

Broward sheriff's deputies said the robbers jumped into a black Ford Taurus waiting outside and fled.

They later found the Taurus abandoned in a parking lot in the 5900 block of Northwest 79th Avenue. The car had been reported stolen in Fort Lauderdale days earlier.

Deputies said the holdup of a Pembroke Pines bank about an hour earlier was the work of other robbers.

At First Union Florida, 204 South Flamingo Rd., two robbers, one with a semiautomatic gun, demanded money from a teller. After the robbers took cash, they ran to the rear of the mall and got away.

Police surrounded the area, but were unable to find them.

Police said the robbers were in their late 20s. One wore a brown hat, white button-down shirt and bluejeans. The other wore a yellow baseball cap, a gray suit, blue shirt, dark tie and mirrored sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Fort Lauderdale police arrested a man on Thursday wanted for several holdups, including one earlier this week.

Alan Gerald Sholtz, 56, is charged with two bank robberies -- at the same bank, the Bank of America at 3600 N. Federal Hwy. police spokeswoman Detective Kathy Collins said. The last robbery was on Wednesday.

Detectives found Sholtz after tips led them to a North Miami apartment complex at 12501 NE 13th St. that Sholtz is said to have frequented, Collins said.