Australian robber Corey Donaldson, who claimed to be a Robin Hood who stole $US140,000 from a Wyoming bank to give to the poor, has lost his appeal in the US.

Donaldson, 41, will serve the five-year sentence a judge handed down last year.

The case was an odd one from the beginning, with Donaldson, an author of relationship books, walking into a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, bank on New Year’s Eve 2012 dressed in sunglasses, a driving cap and speaking with a South African accent.

He told the terrified bank manager Mexican drug cartel members had placed explosives outside the bank.

Donaldson, representing himself in a Cheyenne court, admitted to the jury on the first day he was guilty and in summing up declared: “America is not the place where Robin Hood gets condemned.”

The jury took just 50 minutes to find him guilty.

Donaldson claimed he travelled around the US handing out thousands of dollars from the robbery to the homeless and charities.

But prosecutors told the jury he was staying in a $US347 a night suite at Salt Lake City’s five diamond-rated Grand America Hotel when he was arrested and had placed $US11,000 ($A11,900) in cash in six envelopes addressed to two family members in Victoria.

In his appeal, Donaldson put the blame for his conviction on a court-appointed lawyer who assisted him.

Donaldson also complained paperwork for his trial was confiscated from his jail cell.

“We dismiss without prejudice Donaldson’s claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel and his claims of civil rights violations that allegedly occurred while he was confined awaiting trial and sentencing,” chief judge Mary Beck Briscoe, of the 10th Circuit of the US Court of Appeals, wrote.

Donaldson is serving his sentence in a Folkston, Georgia prison.