Chesterfield County police are looking for a man who is suspected in yesterday’s robbery of a SunTrust bank at 13001 Hull Street Road. The suspect handed a teller a note that demanded money before he fled on foot, according to authorities. The suspect is described as a white man 25 to 30 years old with a dark goatee, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall and weighing 160 to 185 pounds. He wore dark sunglasses and a royal blue, long-sleeve hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans and a black stocking cap.

Altria Group Inc., the largest U.S. tobacco company, said second-quarter profit rose 8.6 percent after price increases. The Henrico County-based maker of Marlboro cigarettes also raised its full-year forecast. Net income increased to $1.01 billion, or 49 cents a share, from $930 million, or 45 cents, a year earlier. Excluding items, adjusted earnings were 50 cents a share, beating the analysts’ estimates of 47 cents.

Billions of dollars flooded into banks’ coffers as the credit crunch gripped the U.S. economy last year, but only a fraction of that stimulus money is going back into the community as loans, regulatory records show. Richmond-area banks that received taxpayer money meant to kickstart lending show only modest increases in loans on their books, a Richmond Times-Dispatch review of hundreds of pages of filings found.

Richmond police are investigating the robbery of the SunTrust bank branch at 3022 W. Broad St. yesterday. At 11:42 a.m., a woman passed a note to a teller demanding money but did not display a weapon, police said. She was last seen running in an alley toward Marshall Street. The suspect is a black female, about 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing 170 pounds. She was wearing sunglasses, a dark, puffy jacket with a hood pulled close to her face and dark jeans.

Charles L. Ellinger O’Brien is running out of chances to avoid prison after stealing $450,000 from his former employer, SunTrust Bank. Yesterday in Richmond, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne gave O’Brien a tongue-lashing and imposed new conditions on the former loan officer, but the Richmond judge did not send him to prison for repeated violations of his supervised release.

A $330 million class-action lawsuit accuses LandAmerica 1031 Exchange Services and Sun Trust Banks Inc. of defrauding clients by using their money to pay off other clients. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California by four LandAmerica clients on behalf of about 400 customers, characterizes the companies’ actions as a Ponzi scheme.

SunTrust Banks Inc., Georgia’s largest lender, today said third-quarter profit fell 25 percent as loan losses worsened in the weakening Southeast real estate market. SunTrust is one of the Richmond area’s largest private employers, with about 3,600 workers. The company’s presence in Richmond includes the headquarters of SunTrust Mortgage Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks.