A 37-year-old man was found guilty of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from multiple automated teller machine technicians who worked his former employer.
On Thursday, Johnson Saint-Louis was convicted of armed bank robbery and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence after a 3-day trial by a federal jury in Tallahassee.
According to court records, over a two-year period from November 2019 to November 2021, Saint-Louis robbed four separate ATM technicians who were sent out to fix problems on machines that he had tampered with. Those machines were scattered across Florida and the United States, including Tallahassee, Boca Raton, Longwood, and Raleigh, North Carolina.
During their investigation into the bank robberies, Seminole County Sheriff’s Office deputies established a surveillance detail on Saint-Louis on November 4, 2021. While they were following Saint-Louis, they observed him travel to various Bank of America locations.
Eventually, the deputies initiated a traffic stop and found Saint-Louis to be in possession of a firearm and extensive notes listing the locations of Bank of America branches in Jacksonville. The branches were annotated with whether the ATM at the location was manufactured by Saint-Louis’ former employer or by another company. The notes included phrases like “too open,” “not enough exit route,” and “two man job.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a financial review and determined that, even though Saint-Louis had been unemployed since mid-2019, he was making large cash deposits into his bank accounts and gambling large amounts of money. That included approximately $89,939 deposited in 2021, and $189,814 lost through gambling. The FBI’s investigation revealed that Saint-Louis had lost $39,480 gambling after a robbery on September 29, 2021.
Saint-Louis is scheduled to be sentenced on January 23, 2023 by United States Middle District Judge Robert L. Hinkle. He faces up to 25 years in prison for armed bank robbery, followed by a mandatory consecutive sentence of between seven years’ and life imprisonment for brandishing a firearm during the offense.