Compulsive NJ Bank Robber From PA Heads Back To Fed Pen For 12½ Years, No Parole

Leon I. Stanford, 54, of Wilkes Barre, PA admitted this past March that he handed tellers notes demanding money at both the TD Bank in Oaklyn on Feb. 22, 2020 and at the Republic Bank in Cherry Hill two days later.

Witnesses at both banks described seeing the robber flee the area in the same white Saturn SUV, said U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger.

Surveillance cameras captured partial license-plate characters that helped investigators identify Stanford as the robber, Sellinger said.

Stanford, who originally hails from the Atlantic City area, served eight years after pleading guilty in 2010 to robbing a Citizens Bank of $4,090 and a Choice One Federal Credit Union of $920 – also over a span of three days -- in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

He was on supervised release when he committed the subsequent holdups in 2020, Sellinger said.

Rather than risk the potential outcome of a trial, Stanford took a deal from the government.

He must serve the entire 151-month plea-bargained term handed down by U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez in Camden on Tuesday, Oct. 24, because there's no parole in the federal prison system.

Rodriguez also sentenced Stanford to three years of supervised release.

Sellinger, meanwhile, credited special agents of the FBI in Philadelphia, members of the New York/New Jersey U.S. Marshals Regional Task Force Camden Division, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office and police in Oaklyn and Cherry Hill for the investigation leading to the guilty plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristen M. Harberg.

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