Robberies Shock 'Hyper-Real' Mask Firm

Sales have soared for a California company that makes ultra-realistic masks — but its owner isn't happy about the way success has arrived. SPFXMasks earned plenty of free publicity when its creations were used by a young Chinese man who posed as an elderly white man to fool immigration, and by a white bank robber who wore an African-American mask so realistic that six of seven bank tellers wrongly picked a black man whose face resembled the mask out of a lineup.

"We're proud of the fact that our masks look real, but I'm not proud of the way they were used," the company's owner, a former makeup artist, tells the Los Angeles Times. "We're very embarrassed this has happened. We were shocked that this happened." Customers for the masks, which cost as much as $1,200, include theme parks, TV shows, and a few Hollywood celebrities who put them on to dodge paparazzi. Authorities suspect another customer may be California's Geezer Bandit.
(More Conrad Zdzierak stories.)