Career Bank Robber Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Robbing a TD Bank Branch in Absecon
| U.S. Attorney’s Office March 06, 2012 |
CAMDEN—An Atlantic City man with a history of bank robberies in New Jersey, Michigan, and Georgia was sentenced to 120 months in prison today for robbing a TD Bank branch in Absecon, New Jersey, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Marcus Newton, 48, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman to an information charging him with bank robbery. Judge Hillman imposed the sentence today in Camden federal court.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:
On December 19, 2009, Newton walked into the Absecon branch of TD Bank and presented the teller a note that read, “This is a robbery. Do it now.” The teller complied and began to get Newton currency from her drawer. Newton demanded money from the teller’s second drawer by stating, “Top and bottom drawer, give me everything, I want everything, don’t play with me now.” Newton took the money from the teller and said, “Thank you.”
The teller gave detectives from the Absecon Police Department and an FBI agent a description of the robber. Law enforcement determined that when the robber exited the bank, he ran across the White Horse Pike to the parking lot of a supermarket. Shortly before the robbery, the robber had entered the supermarket. Images of the robber in the supermarket without any face covering were obtained from the store’s surveillance system.
On March 26, 2010, The Press of Atlantic City newspaper published an article describing the new BanditTracker Northeast website, which features suspects from unsolved bank robberies in New York and New Jersey. The article mentioned the robbery of the Absecon branch of the TD Bank with a surveillance picture of the robber from the supermarket.
A U.S. probation officer contacted the FBI and advised that Marcus Newton, whom she was supervising, fit the description of the robber who was described in the newspaper article. Newton was on federal probation for a series of bank robberies he had committed in both Georgia and Michigan in 1996. He also had been previously convicted of several bank robberies in 1991.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Hillman also sentenced Newton to two concurrent terms of three years each of supervised release and ordered him to pay $3,156 restitution to the bank.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent In Charge Michael B. Ward in Newark, and thanked the Absecon Police Department and the Northfield Police Department for their work leading to today’s sentencing.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Wiener of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Camden.
Defense counsel: Lori M. Koch Esq., Assistant Federal Public Defender, Camden, New Jersey