One of the bank tellers working there that day thought their request was extremely strange since she and her family lived on the only farm that was "one mile north of Adeline", and the farm was not up for sale. The teller, Mrs. Karen Myers, quickly and quietly telephoned a friend and relayed the information about these strange customers. At first her friend thought Karen was only joking until one of the bank robbers came up behind Karen, put a gun to her back and told her to immediately hang up the phone.

All the bank employees were instructed to get inside the bank vault. The gunmen then told Karen to find a large money bag and empty all the tellers cash drawers into it. Karen did as she was told and turned the bag over to the robbers. The men quickly left after receiving the bag of cash, fortunately without harming any of the bank employees, and probably thinking that they had just made a clean getaway after robbing this small town bank.

Unbeknownst to the robbers, the friend that Mrs. Myers had called immediately contacted the police when their phone call had ended so abruptly. She told the police that she believed the bank was being robbed and explained about the strange phone call she had received from her friend who was one of the bank employees. As soon as the robbers left the bank, Mrs. Myers contacted police to let them know of the robbery and she was able to give them a good description of the criminals. The description was then radioed to all available Ogle County Police Officers.

Upon hearing the description of the robbers, an officer was quickly able to apprehended them. The apprehension occurred in the somewhat larger small town of Mount Morris, just 15 miles from German Valley. The apprehension accurred within 30 minutes of the robbers leaving the crime scene.

After going 34 years without another robbery, the German-American State Bank was robbed twice in two weeks in July 2006