Titusville, New Jersey Man Pleads Guilty to Robbing Pennington, New Jersey Bank
| U.S. Attorney’s Office December 01, 2010 |
TRENTON, NJ—A Titusville, New Jersey man pled guilty today to a federal bank robbery charge, admitting that he robbed a TD Bank in Pennington, New Jersey, United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Christopher Kerins, 54, pled guilty before U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson to an Information charging him with one count of bank robbery.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in Trenton federal court:
Kerins admitted robbing a TD Bank in Pennington on August 8, 2010, of approximately $1,432.
During the robbery, Kerins approached a bank teller, and threw a black garbage bag over the counter, saying, “I have a gun. Put money in the bag quickly.” The teller emptied her drawer into the bag, including marked bait money, and tripped the silent alarm.
Kerins was apprehended the same day after a civilian saw him running from the area carrying the garbage bag and wrote down the license plate of the car in which he fled. The civilian provided the plate number to employees of the bank and the information was called in to police, who broadcast an alert for the vehicle which led to Kerins’s detention by local police.
The count to which Kerins pleaded guilty carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Kerins also faces up to an additional three years in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release following a previous federal conviction. Sentencing is scheduled for March 9, 2011.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Michael B. Ward in Newark, along with the Pennington Borough Police Department, Hopewell Township Police Department, and the U.S. Probation Office - District of New Jersey for the work leading to today’s guilty plea.
The government is represented by Assistant United States Attorney Robert G. Marasco of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Trenton.
Defense counsel: Andrea Bergman, Esq., Assistant Federal Public Defender, Trenton