OKLAHOMA CITY – When Jerry Ray Brown reached middle age, his life apparently went off the rails.
Around that time the former Tulsa Fire Department captain decided bank robbery would be a good way to get some money. But that hasn’t worked out so well.
On the afternoon of March 25, a man wearing a light blue hoodie over his head, a dark bandanna and sunglasses that covered his face, tan pants and black boots, strolled into FNB Bank in Choctaw.
He approached the bank teller desk, placed a large black duffel bag on the teller counter, and demanded money by saying, “take me to the vault.”
The “teller” was a plainclothes off-duty police officer working security for the bank. He immediately pulled his service pistol “and confronted the subject,” FBI task force officer Matthew Stephenson wrote in an affidavit.
The would-be robber “raised his hands up, with the duffel bag in front of him, and fled out the entrance doors.”
Detectives reviewed surveillance video from the bank’s parking lot and saw a car fleeing the scene “at a high rate of speed” immediately after the attempted robbery. The car had a tribal tag that was photographed by a nearby FLOCK camera twice on March 28 at locations within two miles of the FNB Bank in Choctaw, Stephenson reported.
That car with that tribal tag was traced to a woman in Skiatook whose father was identified as Jerry Ray Brown.
A photo and a description of Brown from holdups he committed five years ago were “consistent with the physical description” of the person who attempted to rob the Choctaw bank, Stephenson wrote. The FBI agent then contacted Brown’s federal probation officers, who provided him with Brown’s cell phone number.
One of the probation officers contacted the company Brown had listed as his employer, to determine whether he was working on the day of the attempted bank robbery. The company told the probation officer that Brown no longer worked for the company “because of too many work absences.”
Brown, 47, was indicted May 20 in Oklahoma City’s Western District federal court on a charge of attempted bank robbery – five months after his release from federal prison on convictions for two prior bank robberies. He was arraigned May 28 and remains in federal custody while awaiting a jury trial during the July 8 docket, court records show.
Southwest Ledger was unsuccessful in its attempt to contact the off-duty officer who foiled the holdup. Previous robberies Brown was indicted in October 2020 with robbery by intimidation of banks in Skiatook and Sperry in March and May 2020, and was released from custody in November 2020 on a $10,000 appearance bond.
On Oct. 25, 2021, Brown eluded a Nowata County sheriff’s deputy after an attempted traffic stop, but was arrested in Lyon County, Kansas, a short time later. Consequently, on Nov. 29, 2021, he was ordered to be detained in federal custody.
Brown pleaded guilty to two counts of bank robbery and was sentenced in November 2022 to 51 months in prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons released him in October 2024, after a little less than three years’ incarceration, and he remains under active supervision with the U.S. Probation Office.
However, law enforcement officers seized $59,190 cash from Brown on June 9, 2020. In addition, U.S. District Judge Gregory K. Frizzell ordered Brown to pay $260,353 in restitution ($57,783 to the Skiatook bank and $202,570 to the Sperry bank), and authorized Brown’s pension from the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System to be garnished at the rate of 25% of his monthly benefit until his debt is paid. Embezzlement charge A Tulsa homeowner told Tulsa police and the Tulsa County District Attorney’s office that in January 2019 she hired Brown, d/b/a Brown Family Construction, to remodel her house. The homeowner moved out while construction was underway.
Her house burned on July 25, 2019.
During that six-month period Brown made six construction draws totaling $72,076 on an account in the homeowner’s name. “It was estimated that the job was approximately 75% finished prior to the fire,” a Tulsa police lieutenant wrote in an affidavit.
Less than a week after the fire the homeowner received the first of several inquiries from subcontractors “asking about getting paid,” the affidavit relates.
She also received a statement that showed a past-due balance of a little more than $19,000 at a building supply company in Tulsa County. The invoice was for unpaid materials that were acquired for the renovation project at her house.
The homeowner received a $95,000 settlement from her insurance company as compensation for the fire damage to her house, but ultimately paid $15,000 to resolve the unpaid claim with the building supply company, the affidavit states.
In January 2021 Jerry Ray Brown was charged in Tulsa County District Court with felony embezzlement. However, the charge was dismissed in March 2023 at the request of state prosecutors; Brown was still in federal prison at the time.