San Francisco, CA bank robber sentenced to life
January 23rd, 2010 - 3:21 am ICT by BNO NewsSAN FRANSISCO (BNO NEWS) – A man on Wednesday was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay over $315,000 in restitution for an armed bank robbery spree committed in San Francisco, California, prosecutors said on Friday.
Frederick Lim Johnson was convicted of six counts of armed bank robbery and one count of conspiracy. During the trial, evidence showed that in January and February of 2007, Johnson conspired with Tavares Lee Blackmon, Richard Duran, and Vanessa Short to rob banks in the San Francisco Bay Area.
From February 2007 through May 2007, Johnson led the crew on an armed robbery spree of eight banks and was eventually arrested by the FBI in a parking lot near a bank in Sunnyvale, California.
The defendants robbed banks in Belmont, Fremont, Cupertino, San Mateo, Sunnyvale, and San Jose, Calif. During the robberies, Johnson, Duran and Blackmon armed themselves with pistols and performed takeover style robberies where one of the men controlled the bank lobby while the others vaulted the bank teller windows and demanded money. Short was the getaway driver for three of the robberies. The total amount taken from all the banks by the robbery crew was $315,119.
This latest conviction was Johnson’s third federal armed bank robbery conviction (1996, 2005, and 2009). In addition to the bank robberies in 2007, Johnson participated in multiple armed bank robberies in 1994 and again in 2003.
The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Tags: armed robbery, bank robber, bank robberies, bank robbery, bank teller windows, blackmon, bno, california prosecutors, federal bureau of investigation, getaway driver, richard duran, robbery conviction, robbery spree, san francisco bay area, san francisco ca, san francisco california, san fransisco, sunnyvale california, third federal, trial evidence