Director Ryan Coogler was mistaken for a bank robber in Atlanta after asking for $12,000 in cash from a branch of Bank of America (BoA).
According to TMZ, in January, a BoA teller at an Atlanta branch believed that Coogler was trying to stick up and bank and had law enforcement handcuff the Academy Award nominee as a suspect.
The moviemaker has been spending time in Georgia over the last year filming the sequel to his blockbuster Marvel film, “Black Panther.”
He went into a branch and asked to withdraw $12,000 from his checking account. The man behind “Judas and the Black Messiah” came into the bank with dark shades, wool skully, and COVID mask and slipped a discreet note to the teller to ask for the money.
The alleged note read, “I would like to withdraw $12,000 cash from my checking account. Please do the money count somewhere else. I’d like to be discreet.”
The teller, who is described as a Black pregnant woman, tried to complete the transaction on her computer, but instead of it being processed, an alert went off and prompted her to tell her supervisor that Coogler was trying to rob them.
That is when law enforcement was called.
The officers arrived and detained two individuals waiting for Ryan at his SUV. All three men were placed in handcuffs and arrested. However, the officers recognized that Ryan did nothing wrong.
Because of the mix-up, he took down the badge numbers of the arresting officers.
Ryan Coogler recently talked about the mistake, saying, “This situation should never have happened. Bank of America worked with me and addressed it to my satisfaction. And we have moved on.”
