Richard V
© Gaston County JailJames Verone handed a bank teller a note demanding money and claimed he had a gun.

A North Carolina man robbed a local store for a dollar just so he could get health care in prison, he said.

James Verone, 59, handed the teller a note demanding $1 and claimed he had a gun, ABC News reported.

He then walked away and sat down, waiting for police.

"I started to walk away from the teller, then I went back and said, I'll be sitting right over there in the chair waiting for the police," he said, according to local television station 9News. "I wanted to make it known that this wasn't for monetary reasons, but for medical reasons."

Verone, who committed the robbery on June 9, does not plan to pay his bail, which was recently reduced to $2,000.

With little money to his name and many medical problems, including a growth on his chest, two ruptured disks and an unidentified problem with his left foot, he said the "robbery" was his last resort.

"The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept," he told the Gaston Gazette. "I kind of hit a brick wall with everything."

He calculated that a non-violent crime like the bank hold-up would land him in jail, and even enable him to collect Social Security benefits upon his release.

"I'm sort of a logical person and that was my logic, what I came up with," he said.

On the day he committed the felony, Verone mailed a letter to the Gaston Gazette explaining his logic.

"When you receive this a bank robbery will have been committed by me. This robbery is being committed by me for one dollar," he wrote. "I am of sound mind but not so much sound body."