A 29-year-old Orlando man was sentenced to 20 years in prison after he was found guilty of multiple bank robberies that he committed while he was on weekend breaks from a halfway house.
LaTavis Deyonta Mackroy was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron on Wednesday, February 1, to spend 20 years in federal prison for three bank robberies and an attempted bank robbery. Mackroy was found guilty by a federal jury on November 4.
Mackroy was a federal prisoner living at a halfway house last April when he committed a string of robberies. Court records show that Mackroy was scheduled for release and after a month of residency at the halfway house, he became eligible for a home pass to spend a weekend with his family.
On Saturday, April 16, 2022, while Mackroy was using his weekend home pass, he visited a Fairwinds Credit Union in Winter Park and passed the following note to a teller, demanding money:
Mackroy left the credit union with $3,231 and returned to the halfway house the following day, Sunday, April 17.
The following weekend, Mackroy was given another home pass and used it to rob three additional banks. On April 22, during the first of three incidents, Mackroy took $4,000 from a teller at a Chase bank in Kissimmee. The following day, Saturday, April 23, Mackroy visited a TD Bank in Winter Park and took $2,820.
In both incidents, Mackroy passed the same note that demanded “back up money and the top drawer money.”
During a final robbery attempt on April 23, Mackroy visited a Regions Bank in Orange City and passed the same demand note.
After reading Mackroy’s demand note, the teller walked away from his station. Confused by the teller’s actions, Mackroy fled the bank. The next day, he returned to the halfway house.
Despite Mackroy wearing a face mask and sunglasses to conceal his identity in all four robberies, the police were able to obtain fingerprints from the demand note that Mackroy left behind during the fourth incident.
Through Federal Bureau of Investigation records, local authorities were able to match the fingerprints lifted from the note to Mackroy.
Upon learning that Mackroy had been using a home pass during the robberies, law enforcement conducted further investigation and eventually collected Mackroy’s cellphone.
Cellphone location records showed that Mackroy was at the banks at the exact time they were robbed.
Additionally, the FBI recovered clothing from the halfway house that matched the clothing worn by Mackroy during the robberies.
Authorities say that Mackroy was partially identified by a distinctive floral tattoo on his neck, which one of the tellers noticed. The tattoo was caught on surveillance video during one of the robberies.
Authorities positively identified Mackroy on April 25 and he was arrested the following day.
At the time of the robberies, Mackroy was in the process of serving a federal sentence for a robbery of a pawn shop in Apopka in 2014.