Bank Robber From Mobbed-Up Family Was Hiding Out in Hallandale

George Ludwigsen will soon be sentenced for breaking into safety deposit boxes in Mississippi with a saw -- and that's not nearly the most exciting criminal caper the 40-year-old Hallandale Beach resident has to his credit. Earlier in the decade, Ludwigsen and his more famous younger brother, Chris Paciello, partied...

By Thomas Francis

January 25, 2010

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George Ludwigsen will soon be sentenced for breaking into safety deposit boxes in Mississippi with a saw -- and that's not nearly the most exciting criminal caper the 40-year-old Hallandale Beach resident has to his credit. Earlier in the decade, Ludwigsen and his more famous younger brother, Chris Paciello, partied with celebrities at their South Florida nightclubs, enjoying the collaboration of the Bonanno crime family.

Paciello went to prison for murder. Ludwigsen was convicted

of a string of 20 bank robberies in the 1990s, including one in Boca Raton, but he served only a year in prison.

It's not quite clear from this article in the Sun Herald how investigators learned that their suspect in the April 2009 robbery of a Gulfport, Mississippi, bank was in Hallandale. Ludwigsen is the former owner of Liquid nightclub in West Palm Beach.

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