Police say a "fantasy" bank robbery plan posted online has landed a Georgia man in jail with felony charges.
The extremely detailed robbery blueprint came to light after a college student hundreds of miles away noticed the details posted on an online service known as 4Chan. The witness, a Georgia Southern student, said he saw a forum post detailing the robbery of a PNC Bank in Newnan.
It didn't include an exact date but it did have images of the bank and the "tools" the would-be robber planned to use in the crime. Those tools were actually guns.
"When it came to the postings, there was specific information about people who were employed at the bank that, I guess, lends credibility and suggests to the end-user or reader that this person has been in that bank and interacted with those individuals," Jason Fetner wit the Coweta County Sheriff's Office said.
Dispatchers later went back to the site and found the posts were deleted. But the Coweta County Sheriff's Office took over the investigation and called both the target bank and the FBI - the national agency that typically aides in bank robbery investigations. The bank was partially closed down for a day for the safety of their employees.
Soon, they were able to identify and arrest the person they believed was behind the posts - 20-year-old Tristan Connor Gonzalez of Newnan. They even found a handgun in his home. But when questioned by investigators, Gonzalez told them that he never intended to actually rob a bank, calling the messages posted online a form of role-playing.
However, the investigators believed there was enough detail in the plans to charge him with two felonies - attempted robbery with a firearm and terroristic threats - and a non-felony count of criminal attempt.
"Even if this was some sort of live-action-role play or pretense, it's not a fantasy for the people that work in the bank who are now scared to come to work because of - they are afraid they'll be shot or robbed," Fetner said.
