Travis Leeman of Brunswick was a respected foreman for a national telecommunications company. Now he’s in the Cumberland County Jail, accused of a bank holdup last week in which he ordered workers to the floor and fled with cash in a backpack.

Leeman, 30, made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court on Tuesday on a charge of bank robbery, for which he faces as much as 25 years in prison.

He declined a request for an interview, and a man who answered his home telephone said he had been advised not to comment. Co-workers at SBA Communications referred questions to the corporate office, and a spokeswoman there declined to comment.

Leeman has no criminal record, according to the State Bureau of Investigation, but he did get arrested recently. He was due in court Wednesday on a charge of aggravated trafficking in oxycodone within 1,000 feet of a school, stemming from an incident in Brunswick in November.

State police spokesman Steve McCausland said it is particularly dangerous for a robber to show a gun and order people to the floor.

“There are a number of robbers who threaten that they are armed and don’t show any weapons,” he said. “This was far more brazen than most of the others.”

According to a federal complaint, Leeman went into the Infinity Federal Credit Union in Arundel at 9:33 a.m. May 29, wearing a yellow raincoat, an orange mask and gloves,  and pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and a backpack cooler and told the four employees that he was robbing the credit union.

Leeman told the tellers to fill the bag with money, then ordered them to lie on the floor. One minute after entering the bank, he left with $7,691. Nobody saw where he went.

York County Sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Michael Hayes and Detective Matthew Nadeau examined security video showing the backpack. Investigators then went to the nearby Walmart in Biddeford and learned that such an item had been sold around 9 a.m.

Security video from Walmart showed that the man who bought the cooler left in a white extended-cab pickup truck with a logo on the side.

A picture of the truck was given to the Arundel Ford dealership, which identified it as one used by SBA Communications, which has its vehicles serviced there.

FBI Special Agent Patrick Clancy joined the sheriff’s deputies at the Biddeford office of SBA Communications and learned that the truck was assigned to Leeman and was equipped with a tracking system.

Records showed that the truck was at Walmart at 9 a.m., then at 31 Trout Brook Road in Arundel, about a quarter-mile from the credit union, when the robbery occurred.

On Monday, police picked up Leeman near his workplace and took him to the York County Jail for drug testing, which was allowed as a condition of his bail.

He asked if he could make a telephone call to his wife, Heather. Deputies overheard him tell his wife that he had robbed a bank, the complaint says. A search of the couple’s home turned up the handgun.

Confronted with the evidence, Leeman to admitted robbing the bank, the complaint says. It does not say what happened to the money.

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@pressherald.com