Sometime last year, there was a stickup at Dwelling House Savings & Loan in the Hill District. The robber didn't wear a mask or walk through the front door of Pittsburgh's oldest and most prominent black financial institution with guns blazing.

Without ever threatening a bank teller or pistol-whipping a security guard, the robber made off with an estimated $1.8 million. There was no getaway car or skid marks down Herron Avenue. The robber made off with the cash through a series of fraudulent automatic clearing house transactions. Imagine a nearly $2 million theft on an electronic installment plan.

The robbery was such a smooth operation that it wasn't uncovered until a routine audit pieced it together at the end of 2008. By March 2009, the full extent of the electronic stickup was apparent. Heads had to roll.

Along with controller Gonzell Phillips, the bloodletting included the scalp of Dwelling House President Robert M. Lavelle, the son of its 93-year-old founder Robert R. Lavelle. The younger Lavelle had been at the helm long enough to know better.

"Management wasn't doing what they should have been doing," the elder Lavelle told Post-Gazette reporter Tim Grant. "My son was president at the time and should have been more attentive of what was going on."

That was about as close as anyone officially connected to Dwelling House has gotten to acknowledging the gross ineptitude that has left the institution critically undercapitalized. Since then, the DH board of directors has imposed a gag order on everyone involved -- not that the fired bank managers were eager to talk, anyway.

Federal bank regulators will shut DH down at the end of the month if it doesn't come up with $2 million to become "adequately capitalized" again. Roughly $1 million has been raised so far, but that isn't enough to keep the institution's doors open.

That's why there's a community rally this afternoon at the Hill House Association on Centre Avenue. Organizers want folks, especially those who have benefited from the "social mission" of Dwelling House over five decades, to show their support by bringing their checkbooks to the rally.

It is worth noting that DH was the only local institution, outside the numbers runners and loan sharks, to lend money to African-Americans in Pittsburgh for years. Robert R. Lavelle believed in home ownership as one of the quickest paths to social equality in America. The electronic stickup of DH last year is the greatest threat to its mission since its founding. People would forgive the elder Lavelle if he showed a little more outrage.

As it stands now, no criminal charges have been filed, but the DH board has blandly announced that legal means are being pursued to recover the stolen money.

The DH board also wants to assure us that the theft wasn't an inside job, even though they're not sharing any information about the criminal investigation -- assuming there even is a criminal probe at this point.

Many readers are fond of telling me that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but doesn't the fact that lawyers are involved in this thing imply that someone knows who the culprit is?

Who tries to get stolen loot back from a bank robber by "legal" means? Are lawyers better at this than cops or the FBI?

There are millions of questions that anyone thinking about putting money into the coffers of DH to recapitalize it has every right to ask.

As one of my colleagues astutely put it, if someone showed up for a loan at DH, the loan officer would demand financial transparency before even considering it. Why shouldn't an institution that demands transparency from others be more forthcoming about a crime that has crippled it financially? The lack of screaming and moaning over the peculiarities of this case is astonishing.

Many at the rally will agree that asking probing questions about the crime is appropriate, while insisting that it is just as important to show support for Dwelling House and its historic role in the community. This is not the time to point fingers or assign blame, they say.

With all due respect, there's no better time than now to ask DH officers how a thief was able to abscond with nearly $2 million through an electronic back door. How does this happen to an institution with a 52-year track record?

In recent months, Pittsburgh has seen the demise of WAMO, the city's first and only black-owned radio station. Like Dwelling House, WAMO had deep roots in the community going back decades. Unless DH comes up with another $1 million, it, too, will become a Black History Month trivia question.