Greenbelt, Maryland – U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte sentenced Douglas Randall Phillips, age 58, of Baltimore, Maryland, today to 151 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for federal charges of bank robbery and violation of his federal supervised release from a prior bank robbery conviction. Judge Messitte also ordered Phillips to pay restitution in the full amount of the victim’s loss.
The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur; Special Agent in Charge Jennifer C. Boone of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office; Chief Melissa R. Hyatt of the Baltimore County Police Department; and Commissioner Michael Harrison of the Baltimore Police Department.
According to his plea agreement, on December 13, 2019, Phillips entered a bank located in the 11000 block of York Road in Hunt Valley, Maryland and approached a teller. Phillips handed the teller a note which read, “This is a robbery, I have a gun and will begin shooting unless you give me all loose 100’s, 50’s + 20’s immediately.” Phillips obtained more than $700 from the teller and fled the branch on foot. After this incident, the bank circulated an internal alert amongst its employees, which included an image of Phillips from the bank’s surveillance camera footage from December 13, 2019.
On December 18, 2019, Phillips entered a different branch of the same bank in Baltimore, Maryland to make a withdrawal from his own account. The bank employees at this branch recognized Phillips from the internal bank alert and called police. Phillips was arrested and the clothes he was wearing at the time of his arrest were the same clothes worn by the robber in the surveillance footage from the December 13, 2019 robbery. Prior to the robbery, Phillips had been employed at a company located in Hunt Valley, close to the bank branch that he robbed.
At the time that Phillips committed the December 13, 2019, bank robbery Phillips knew he was on supervised release for a previous federal bank robbery conviction. Committing the December 13th robbery violated the conditions of his supervised release.
United States Attorney Robert K. Hur praised the FBI, the Baltimore County Police Department, and the Baltimore Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Hur thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Ayn B. Ducao, who prosecuted the case.