Ex-Marine Gets 8 Years in String of Bank Robberies

A former Marine who stole more than $70,000 in a string of West Coast bank robberies apologized, then was sentenced to the maximum eight years in prison.

Benjamin Michael Johns, 23, of Colorado Springs, Colo., pleaded guilty to four counts of robbery in California, Washington and Oregon.

U.S. District Judge William Enright rejected his lawyer’s request Monday for a more lenient sentence.

“I really don’t have any sympathy for you in connection with what happened,” Enright said. The robberies “traumatized too many people,” the judge said.

Fellow Marine Nicholas Paul Hills, 21, of Juneau, Wis., has pleaded guilty to the same charges and is set to be sentenced June 5.

Johns turned to robbery because he was addicted to cocaine, which “clouded his judgment” and made him desperate for money, attorney Howard Frank argued.

“His conduct can only be described as outrageous. . . . There is absolutely no excuse,” Frank told the judge.

Hills and Johns fled Camp Pendleton in August after a base newspaper published photos of the two Marines from a bank security camera.

The FBI had asked the paper to run the photos because the suspects looked like Marines.

Before their crimes began, Johns bragged that he had a girlfriend at a Bank of America branch in Carlsbad who gave him advice on how to rob a bank and avoid having the surveillance camera take a good photo of him, according to court records.

The girlfriend no longer works at the bank and was not charged in the case, said Randy Jones, a federal prosecutor.

Johns and Hills, who have since received less-than-honorable discharges, were lance corporals and members of a front-line Marine combat unit at Camp Pendleton.

The first robberies were in communities near the base. They were followed by heists in Palo Alto; Tukwila, Wash.; and Portland, Ore.