By Emily Mieure
Jackson Hole News&Guide
Via Wyoming News Exchange
JACKSON — Five days after his release from federal prison for robbing a Jackson bank, Corey Allan Donaldson emailed the Jackson Hole News&Guide, eager to talk about his crime and his time.
“This is Corey Donaldson, the Robin Hood bank robber,” he wrote. “I am released and exiled. Shall we do a story on what really happened in Jackson Hole?”
Donaldson walked out of prison in July after doing five and a half years behind bars for robbing a Jackson bank on New Year’s Eve in 2012.
The 44-year-old convicted felon says he’s back in Australia now and is ready to tell all.
“As an Australian, it was very cool to rob an American bank,” Donaldson said in a 24-page statement full of braggadocio, “humiliating those who hate the poor with the finest heist.”
Donaldson has always been vocal, even proud, about how he robbed the bank to help the needy. He never denied the crime.
“I was in the bank for an hour and a half while customers were transacting business,” Donaldson said. “I was in full view of all the money-changers, without a single alarm being triggered. I secured $140,750 without touching any of it, got away slower than Grandma, and stayed away, donating the cash to the needy across three states.”
Donaldson was arrested on Jan. 22, 2013, in Clinton, Utah, according to News&Guide reports.
Jackson Police Detective Andy Pearson worked the investigation at the time.
“We figured out what vehicle he was driving and whose vehicle it was,” Pearson recalled on Tuesday. “An officer in Utah spotted the vehicle. A lot of people worked really hard on that case.”
Donaldson was tried federally and was eventually convicted. He fought for years for a reversal but ultimately lost.
But in his 22 days as a fugitive after the heist in the first few weeks of 2013, Donaldson said he donated the stolen money.
“I triumphantly redistributed ‘bailout’ money back to the poor and homeless in Utah, Nevada and California, in addition to the Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America,” Donaldson wrote. “It wasn’t about donations to the poor. It was about confiscating corrupt system cash and giving that cash to the poor.”
Besides the robbery, Donaldson has no ties to Jackson. His reasoning for choosing the U.S. Bank on Powderhorn Lane seems pretty random.
“The heist was appointed to be executed in a location that sticks it to the townsfolk who aid and abet this circus of traditional American corruption,” Donaldson said, “while delivering a spanking to the participating moneychangers and overseers of that town. Job done!”
It was an unusual crime for Jackson. Donaldson told a bank manager that members of a Mexican cartel were outside the building and were prepared to blow it up if he didn’t get money.
“We don’t get a lot of bank robberies,” Pearson said.
There hasn’t been a bank robbery here since.
In Donaldson’s email that he titled “statement of posture” he details his time behind bars.
“Jailers routinely destroyed my legal mailings and confiscated files in order to sabotage my legal interests for the entire 66 months of my incarceration,” he wrote.
Because Donaldson is from Australia, he served time in private immigration prisons.
He claims the wardens were ruthless and allowed their jailers to commit crimes against inmates.
“I was continually expelled from each facility when I exercised my rights against abuse,” Donaldson said.
He said he spent time in four different prisons and 20 different jails in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Reports indicate he also served time in Nebraska.
“I spent the last 20 days in prison in the hole on hunger strike,” Donaldson said.
He called the facilities “manifestations of pure evil.”
Donaldson said he was eligible for release in August 2017 but wasn’t released until last month.
“They kept me for almost a year over my sentence,” he said.
The 3,946-word statement (attached here) also lists other grievances such as being excommunicated from his church, tossed naked into a holding cell, being mistreated and witnessing mistreatment of other inmates.
Donaldson represented himself during his federal trial. But his Robin Hood defense tactic wasn’t upheld.
A jury found him guilty, and a federal judge sentenced him to serve 70 months in prison.
The judge also ordered Donaldson be deported back to Australia after his release from prison.
The other option, if he wanted to stay in the U.S., was to serve three years of supervised probation.
He said his prison time was “worth it.”
“I took a stand for what’s right and against what’s wrong,” he wrote. “Later in life, a man regrets the stand he did not make. I will not suffer such anguish.”
Before the robbery Donaldson was a self-help author.
Now he’s created an online presence that hints at a book that’s in the works.
On his Twitter page with the handle @fedsbane, Donaldson wrote, “The truth of what happened is coming.” So far he has 16 followers.