A homeless man charged with attempting three bank robberies was charged Thursday with a fourth, committed on Christmas Eve.

Ronald Andrew Brown, 37, called a bomb threat into the Fulton Bank in the Manor Shopping Center on Millersville Pike about 10:15 a.m. Dec. 24, city police Det. Lt. Kent Switzer wrote in a news release.

Brown was arrested five days later on Dec. 29, minutes after police say he held up the M&T Bank in the Wheatland Shopping Center on Columbia Avenue. He also is charged with attempting to rob the PNC Bank on East King Street and the Fulton Bank on McGovern Avenue, both on Dec. 26.

All four holdups involved bomb threats, police said.

The Christmas Eve incident forced the evacuation of the bank to a nearby store after a teller took an intimidating call. A man's voice "informed her that there was a bomb in a trash can out in front of the bank," Switzer wrote.

The man said he was watching the bank and would blow it up unless the teller left a large sum of cash at a nearby store.

The teller called Fulton Bank security, who notified police. The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office investigated with a bomb-sniffing dog and determined there were no explosives at the bank. The scene was declared safe after about an hour.

"No loot was obtained," Switzer wrote.

On Thursday, Brown was charged with robbery and making fake weapons of mass destruction. He will be arraigned later, Switzer said.

Brown committed his other three robbery attempts in person, police said, threatening bank employees with phony bombs he made out of trash. Police said he was carrying a bag of cash from his most recent heist when they caught him behind Wheatland Shopping Center.

Brown has confessed to the Dec. 26 and Dec. 29 holdups, police said. They did not say Thursday if he had confessed to the Dec. 24 incident.

Brown is being held at Lancaster County Prison, a spokesperson there confirmed Thursday, where he was committed previously in lieu of $250,000 bail.

E-mail: tstuhldreher@lnpnews.com