Countywide : 3 Men Sentenced in Robbery Cases

The FBI announced Tuesday that three men have been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to robbing Ventura County financial institutions.

Michael Robert Hulette, 39, of Camarillo pleaded guilty last fall to the Oct. 5, 1989, robbery of Santa Paula Savings and Loan and received a two-year, six-month sentence, said FBI Special Agent Charlie J. Parsons. He had remained free on bond until his sentencing Monday.

Also sentenced were Steven Monte Mize, 21, of Oxnard for the Feb. 5 robbery of the Federal Credit Union at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme; and Jeffrey Boyd Miller, 39, of West Los Angeles, for robbing banks in Camarillo and Los Angeles.

All three men were sentenced in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Hulette was identified as a possible suspect in the 1989 Santa Paula robbery soon after his picture was published in area newspapers, said FBI Special Agent Larry Dick.

But bank employees were unable to verify the identification, he said. The employees recalled the robber’s all-black clothing, including a cowboy hat with a distinctive turquoise hat band. But they were unsure about the man’s appearance.

Eighteen months later, investigators tracked down a former roommate of Hulette who implicated him in the crime, Dick said. At the time of his arrest, Hulette was working as a service representative at a Thousand Oaks car dealership.

Mize, a former Seabee, was arrested in March after handwriting samples analyzed by the Naval Intelligence Service linked him to a note handed to a teller during the Feb. 5 robbery of the Federal Credit Union on base.

Descriptions of the robber led investigators to identify Mize as a suspect in the credit union robbery, and a search of his room turned up handwriting samples that tied him to the crime, Parsons said.

Last week, Mize was sentenced to two years, nine months in federal prison.

Miller was sentenced Thursday to four years, seven months in federal prison for the November, 1991, robbery of the Security Pacific Bank branch on Arneill Road in Camarillo and the Feb. 20 robbery of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Los Angeles, Parsons said.

Miller was identified a month after the Camarillo robbery and was arrested by Los Angeles police immediately after the second robbery, he said.

Special Agent Gary Auer in charge the FBI’s Ventura office described the sentences as typical. “The solution rate is now over 80%, the robbers won’t get much money, and the sentence will be long,” Auer said.