James Hayes was a guy who grew up 20 minutes from the beach in the middle-class community of Camarillo, California. As a child, he showed promise as a violin player, becoming the youngest member of the county orchestra before his teens.
But growing up in a single parent home was difficult for him, especially considering his mother suffered from mental illness. At the age of 13, James was sent to live with his grandmother Melba after his mother began physically abusing him. In the next year, he quit playing violin.
Change of Interests
“I got interested in girls and they wouldn’t talk to me if I was holding a violin case!” James wrote in his typical upbeat style. “So I got into cars!” By the time he was 18, he was tooling around the neighborhood in a convertible Baja Bug, splitting his time between surfing, his car, and his girlfriend.
Fun Guy
“He was cute; he had wild hair and freckles. He looked like a let’s-go-have-fun type of guy,” said Candace Walker, his girlfriend at the time. “He had a funny sense of humor and was usually in a good mood.” But when Candace got pregnant at the age of 17, “he didn’t want to be a father, so I ended up finding a family who took our son.”
Booted
The two of them stayed together for 15 more years after that until, in 1997, Hayes left Candace for a younger woman. “I got the boot and got kicked out of the house. The next year, he was 35-year-old working the graveyard ship as a security guard for commercial and residential buildings when something happened that would change his life forever.
Lucky Day
On January 7th, 1998, Hayes bought himself a Quick Pick lottery ticket at a gas station. His grandmother, who he was living with and caring for at the time, would check the numbers as part of her morning routine while he slept after work. That morning, she interrupted his sleep with some fantastic news: He’d hit a $19 million jackpot.
Money Changes You
Hayes was beyond ecstatic but was also wary about the kinds of change that such a sudden influx of money could mean for his life. “I know I’ll change but only for the better,” he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “Mainly what I want to do is help out my family and friends in need.” He added, “I’m not going to blow the money.”
Car Crazy
After taxes, Hayes was going to be taking home a little under $14 million, which he would get in 20 annual payments of $684,000. Contrary to his word, he started burning through the cash immediately. “I owned six different Lambos,” he wrote. “I’m a car guy – Bentleys, Porsches, Corvettes, etc. I owned beachfront houses, had actress girlfriends, you name it, I’ve probably done it.”
High Life
He was deeply enmeshed in the “high life,” starting a business to rent exotic sports cars to high rollers in Las Vegas. “Because of his cars, he met celebrities like Mario Andretti, who picked one of his Lamborghinis – I would say the color was nail-polish pink – to drive at the Running of the Bulls,” said David Parker, Hayes’ former personal photographer. “He had a lot of toys and was in that crowd.”
Taking Half
In the late 1990s, Hayes divorced his first wife Stephanie and she was awarded half of his annual lottery payments. But even with his income chopped in half, he didn’t stop splurging. “He developed a taste for the best,” said his second wife, Stephanie Wysinger-Hayes.
Still Balling
“When I got together with him,” Wysinger-Hayes continued, “he had 17 cars. He’d let my kids drive his Ferrari. He was living a flashy life and I was enjoying his gifts.” Being a banker, she had a better head for money than he did and tried to get Hayes to take some lessons in financial management but he was “caught up in the excitement,” and blowing his dough on his toys, in Vegas Casinos, or just giving it away to his friends.
Flip Side
“Having money enabled me to live my wildest dreams,” Hayes said. “But there’s a flip side. It’s the lottery curse.” A work injury from his past came back to haunt him and he suffered three herniated disks which required surgery in 2004. When the surgery didn’t help, James Hayes turned to prescription medications to deal with his pain. “Doctors prescribed me Vicodin, Norco, then Oxycontin. I was addicted without even knowing it.”
Spiral of Addiction
Like all untreated addictions, Hayes’ got worse as time went by. “I started to need a stronger and stronger dose,” he said. Without a steady job or healthcare, he was paying for all of his pills out of pocket. Though he was still taking home about $300,000 after income tax and alimony payments, his debts, bad business decisions, and pill addiction led to a bankruptcy in 2007.
Losing it All
Hayes moved into a modest apartment complex where he worked as a manager in exchange for free rent. He was getting along just fine until 2017 when a fire destroyed the complex and nearly everything he owned along with it. Desperate and broke, he moved into a friend’s garage. That was when, suffering from Oxycontin withdrawal, he turned from prescription pills to less expensive street drugs.
‘The Answer’
“The first time I tried heroin, I dissolved it into water and sniffed it. It took away my back pain and the pill sickness for 48 hours. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s the answer!’” Needing money to pay for a new addiction, he was struck by a crazy idea while listening to some ‘80s metal music. “I mentally snapped,” he said. “I was broke, dope-sick, pissed off at the world, living in a garage with my beloved cat looking up at me hungry.” So, he thought, why not rob a bank?
‘Priest’s’ Message
As he began to weigh the pros and cons of becoming a bank robber, Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law” began to play. By the time the song was done, he’d made up his mind. Outside of a bank in Carpinteria, he stuffed a pillow under his shirt and pulled a baseball cap low over his face and went inside. He handed a teller a note demanding cash and, after she handed it over, he bolted to his car.
Easy Money
In less than three minutes, Hayes had made himself $3,300 and was stunned at how easy it was. “I’d never been so scared in my life until I walked out of the bank with those $100 bills,” he said. “The poor teller […] was terrified. She just handed [the money] over.” According to the news, his simple disguise had left investigators searching for a 350-lb man, filling him with even more confidence.
Easier And Easier
Hayes read up on true crimes to get better at his craft, disguising his body type, spraying his fingers with liquid bandages to avoid leaving prints, and making sure he was always gone in less than three minutes. “It got easier every time,” he said. “I was completely hooked. I was getting off on it. It was like a game.”
Serial Robber
Using money from the robberies, Hayes bought himself a tan-colored PT Cruiser that he used exclusively for all future robberies. Over the next five months, he hit more than ten banks, blowing through the money just as he had with his lottery winnings only this time, he was spending about $1,000 a week on heroin. Dubbed the “PT Cruiser Bandit” by the local media, it wasn’t long at all before the FBI was on his trail.
Escalating Frequency
“You could see the robberies were escalating in frequency,” said Special Agent Ingerd Sotelo, lead investigator on the case. “We were hoping they wouldn’t escalate in violence.” The FBI developed a theory that their man lived somewhere along Highway 126, since it connected all of the banks that had been hit. Then in September of 2018, investigators got their first big break in the case.
Spotted
Hayes tried to rob a Wells-Fargo that he’d previously hit last June but was forced to flee the scene empty-handed after an employee recognized him. “I knew he was going to hit again because he was out of money,” Agent Soleto said. The FBI set up a camera on Highway 126 and captured his car and license plate as he fled from another bank robbery a short time later. They had him.
Caught
A few days later, Hayes was walking out of the garage he was still staying in when he heard “Don’t move!” shouted at him. More than a dozen FBI agents had their weapons drawn on him as he was arrested. His wife, Stephanie Wysinger-Hayes was also arrested as she was a suspected accomplice.
It Can’t Be
The FBI grilled her for over an hour, believing that she must have some knowledge of the heists. “I thought it was a case of mistaken identity,” she said. But after being shown photos of the man in question at various crime scenes she recognized that the agents were telling the truth. “I said ‘Oh, my God, that’s him.’ It was one of the freakiest moments of my life.”
No Denial
In the other room, Hayes simply asked for a cigarette and confessed immediately, making sure investigators knew that Wysinger-Hayes had no knowledge of his actions. He was sent to a federal detention center in Los Angeles where he detoxed from heroin, cold turkey.
Go Easy, Your Honor
After Hayes pleaded guilty to multiple counts of robbery, his defense attorney Stephen Demik argued for leniency, citing Hayes’ clean criminal record, rough upbringing, and the non-violent nature of his crimes. “Mr. Hayes was a pitiful drug addict, living in a garage and dealing with one of the worst addictions ever,” he wrote in court papers. He also cited the “lottery curse” as part of the reason for his turn to crime.
Worst And Best Thing
He was ultimately sentenced to 33 months in prison and forced to pay back the nearly $40,000 he’d stolen. “He could have gotten a lot more time,” said Agent Sotelo. “Prison is a the most horrible thing ever but I’m thankful it happened. It saved my life. I should have overdosed 100 times and now I’m eight months sober,” James Hayes said. It seemed he had a little luck left after all.
