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Kenneth Graham, 50, of Newark, was wearing a black mask and blue jeans when he entered the downtown Boost Mobile store on Central Avenue and announced a robbery in the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 18, 2021, federal prosecutors said.
Graham pointed a gun at a store employee, who was ordered to place several cell phones from a display case and cash from the register into a bag, they said.
Security footage showed Graham getting into a black Nissan Altima and driving away with the loot, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said. He wore a sweatshirt with a distinctive logo – the same as in photos on his cellphone, the U.S. attorney said.
Graham nonetheless rejected a plea deal and took his chances with a jury.
Following a three-week trial, jurors in U.S. District Court in Newark convicted him on March 20 of Hobbs Act robbery, as well as with using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm during a violent crime.
Graham is looking at a mandatory minimum of 25 years -- and as much as life -- in federal prison for the gun convictions alone. That’s because he pleaded guilty in 2007 to three gunpoint bank robberies in North Jersey over the course of three months.
Graham took a plea deal in that case, admitting that he:
- robbed a Bank of America branch in Belleville on Jan. 7, 2006 of what authorities said was $5,374 in cash;
- took an undisclosed amount of cash from a PNC Bank branch on Main Avenue in Clifton on Feb. 16; and
- robbed a Valley National Bank branch of Lincoln Avenue in Fair Lawn of $17,300 on March 24.
A large, black semiautomatic handgun was brandished in all three holdups, federal investigators said at the time.
Graham was sentenced in June 2007 to 204 months – 17 years plus three months.
While imprisoned at FCI Edgefield in South Carolina, he “worked to rehabilitate himself by, among other things, earning his GED in 2014 and completing a variety of courses and programs to assist [him] in securing gainful employment upon his release, including courses in interview preparation and in the culinary arts,” court papers on file in U.S. District Court in Newark day.
Suffering from diabetes, Graham received a “compassionate release” into home confinement in November 2020 after serving 13½ years, U.S. Bureau of Prisons records show.
Soon after, he was in custody again.
Sellinger credited special agents and task force officers of the FBI in Newark and members of the East Orange Police Department with the investigation leading to the conviction secured by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin Levin and Jennifer S. Kozar of his Criminal Division in Newark.
The U.S. attorney didn’t announce a sentencing date before Senior U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini in Newark.
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