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The man who became known as the "Crown Royal bandit" sometimes would assure customers in the bank he was robbing that he was not taking their money, witnesses reported, only the bank's money.

Sometimes he was heard to claim he was a victim of the mortgage crisis and had lost his house.

There were occasions when witnesses said he smelled like alcohol, as if he had been drinking heavily from the bottle that was once contained in the blue velvet Crown Royal bag he used to carry away the money from the bank.

Local, state and federal law enforcement officers say they have finally stopped Bruce Allen Hughes, the suspected "Crown Royal bandit," indicting him Tuesday in connection with 28 armed robberies in North Georgia and Tennessee over the past 11 years. The federal indictment returned Tuesday also charged him with carrying a weapon, despite felony burglary convictions in Florida, and with conspiring to rob banks with another defendant, Christine Verner.

"He was surprised," Capt. Michael Benner of the Madison County Sheriff's Office said of Hughes' arrest at a trailer where he lived with several people.

Though Hughes, 47, was not charged with robbing any banks in Madison County, a tip came to an officer at the jail; a caller said another woman in the Madison County Jail on drug charges had been "living with a bank robber," Benner said.

Benner said Hughes was connected to the Feb. 21 robbery of the Regions Bank on Prince Avenue in Athens. Athens-Clarke County police detective Chuck Ivey linked that holdup to some of the others on the FBI's list.

"This case involved a staggering 28 armed bank robberies and a loss of over $300,000 in federally insured currency," said U.S. Attorney David Nahmias.

According to the indictment, Hughes' first robbery was of a Wachovia Bank in Alpharetta on May 7, 1997. He is accused of following that robbery with one almost every month until January 1998. There were a total of five bank robberies in 1998, and Hughes is accused of committing between two and five robberies a year through the end of 2003. The indictment said Hughes also robbed several banks in 2006.

If he should be convicted of all the charges against him, Hughes could be sentenced to four life sentences plus 110 years in prison and fined up to $2.5 million, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.