Ex-MIT prof jailed for 'making experimental film' about bank robbery. In a bank. Without saying it was a film

A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lecturer has been sentenced to a year in prison, after videotaping himself as he robbed a Manhattan bank last year.

The Boston Globe reports that Joe Gibbons is an "experimental filmmaker" and that he allegedly planned to use the footage from his heist in an upcoming film.

Gibbons had been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2001, but had fallen on hard times since leaving MIT. He managed to steal $1,002 in the raid.

The former lecturer in art has been in detention in New York since being arrested in January and has attracted luvvie supporters across the USA who are attempting to raise money on his behalf.

"You never can tell if the character he is playing is actually him or a work of fiction," Vincent Grenier, a filmmaker and professor at Binghamton University, told the Globe last month.

"He's not led a normal life," added Grenier. ®