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Federal agents arrested Carl Williams, 30, in July last year and charged him and three other men in connection with the holdups, which stretched from June 2012 to the following January.
Two of the robbers brought three employees and a customer to the back of the T-Mobile store at Park Place in Paramus on Jan. 16, 2013, and forced them to lie on the floor and tied them up, the FBI said in a complaint.
One of the employees was forced to fill two laundry bags with 74 cellphones before she,too, was tied up, it says.
A UPS employee walked into the store, at which point one of the robbers pointed a gun, brought him into the back and bound him, as well.
The M.O. was similar in the other robberies.
Williams and his accomplices assigned lookouts while the remaining armed members went in.
Williams pleaded guilty in federal court in Trenton today to robbery and “brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.” He faces up to 20 years in federal prison when he is sentenced on Jan. 21.
U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman credited special agents of the FBI and thanked the Paramus, Linden and Woodbridge police departments, as well as the New York City and Nassau County police departments and the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in New York for their work in the case, handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Osmar J. Benvenuto of Fishman’s Criminal Division.
PHOTO: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Correspondent Boyd A. Loving
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