Ricky Beale rode in the back of a stretch limousine to rob a Bank of America of $5,000, San Francisco police say, only to earn a free ride to jail later Thursday.

Beale, 31, a personal trainer, hired the limo to take him from his studio on Van Ness Avenue to San Francisco International Airport, said Inspector Dan Gardner of the robbery detail. Beale told the driver to stop at his girlfriend’s place.

Instead of visiting his girlfriend, however, Beale went to the Bank of America branch at 3701 Balboa St., police said, and allegedly robbed two tellers after simulating having a handgun.

A witness spotted Beale getting into the limo. Police were alerted and pulled the car over at 20th Ave. and Lincoln Way at 11:20 a.m.

“It’s a stretch limousine — not exactly the most discreet getaway vehicle, ” Gardner said.

The driver, he added, “got stiffed.”

“It’s just one of those things,” said the driver, Cornelius Weekley, owner of My Way Limo.

He said he had driven for Beale about eight times, usually for bar-hopping and such occasions as New Year’s Eve.

“But that was in the evening, when the banks are closed,” Weekley said.

“I thought he was pretty successful myself, but you never know,” he said. “It was a big surprise.”

Story courtesy of Jaxon Van Derbeken and San Francisco Chronicle