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Police: Employee using fake name tied up manager, robbed Seattle strip club of $

A man who arrived in Seattle a couple of weeks ago used a fake name to get a job at a strip club, then used his insider knowledge of the business to bind the manager with duct tape and steal $3,000 — much of it in $1 bills — at gunpoint, according to King County prosecutors.

It took Seattle police detectives just three days to organize a surveillance and arrest operation at a downtown apartment building and uncover Tyre M. Johnson’s true identity after the Dec. 15 robbery at Kittens Cabaret, a strip club on Fourth Avenue South in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood, charging papers say.

Johnson, 31, was arrested Dec. 18 when he came out of the building on Pine Street and Second Avenue where he had rented a fifth-floor apartment advertised on Airbnb. He has been charged with first-degree kidnapping and first-degree robbery. He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 6, jail and court records show.

The charges filed Monday don’t indicate where Johnson is from, but note he has previously been arrested in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and had what appeared to be an identification card issued in Texas.

Senior Deputy Prosecutor Christian Brown wrote in charging papers that Johnson had only been in Washington for two weeks and during “that time period the defendant methodically set up his plan for this violent kidnapping and robbery.”

Brown went on to note that Johnson “has zero ties to this community and appears to have been passing through the state in order to commit his violent felonies.”