Anthony L. Livingston, 50, robbed a PNC Bank in Gloucester Township on July 14, 2018 (photos above), a day after he’d been released after serving more than 18 years in federal prison for robbing eight South Jersey banks in 2000 and 2001, authorities said.
Ten days after the Gloucester holdup, Livingston tried to recruit a homeless man to rob another PNC branch, this one in Stratford, they said.
Livingston “instructed the man on how to rob the bank, gave him a demand note to show to the teller, and drove the man to the bank,” Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael Honig said.
Instead, the man told a teller that “he had been sent there to rob the bank and that he did not want to do it,” Honig said.
He also said the bank “should call the police because the person who had sent him was waiting for him outside,” she added.
Livingston slipped away and only four hours recruited another man, Laque Hunter, to rob the Collingswood Ocean First bank, the U.S. attorney said.
Livingston drove the getaway car and the two split the proceeds, she said.
Hunter pleaded guilty in April 2019 rather than go to trial. His sentencing was postponed pending the outcome of the case against Livingston.
Livingston chose a trial, which ended in convictions for two bank jobs and the attempt at the third. As before, he'll have to serve out nearly the entire sentence handed down in U.S. District Court in Camden because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Renee Marie Bumb sentenced Livingston to three years of supervised release.
Honig credited special agents of the FBI’s Cherry Hill Field Office, Camden County police, the Camden County prosecutor’s and sheriff’s offices and Collingswood, Gloucester Township and Stratford police with the investigation.
Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kristen M. Harberg and Patrick C. Askin of her Camden Office.
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