BOSTON – A Boston man pleaded guilty today in federal court in Boston to the April 2020 robbery of a Santander Bank branch in Boston.
Dennis C. Taylor, 49, pleaded guilty one count of bank robbery. U.S. District Court Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV scheduled sentencing for June 15, 2022. Taylor was arrested and charged by criminal complaint on Nov. 4, 2020, and subsequently indicted by a federal grand jury on Nov. 12, 2020.
On April 29, 2020, an individual – later determined to be Taylor – dressed in a dark hooded jacket, blue latex gloves and a facemask entered a Santander Bank branch on Massachusetts Avenue in Boston where he approached a teller and demanded money. The teller handed Taylor cash from her drawer, which he placed in a white plastic bag before exiting the bank. Included within the cash was a red dye pack. Surveillance cameras on Massachusetts Avenue captured video of Taylor exiting the area and running towards a local parking garage as the red dye pack exploded into a plume of red smoke. During a subsequent search of the parking garage, law enforcement recovered a white plastic bag containing red dye-stained money and a pair of blue latex gloves. The gloves were found to match Taylor’s DNA profile.
Taylor has been previously convicted of federal bank robbery in 2004 and again in 2010. In 2010, Taylor was sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release for the December 2009 robberies of a Rockland Trust bank and a TD Bank in Yarmouth.
The charge of bank robbery provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins; Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Boston Police Acting Commissioner Gregory Long made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth G. Shine of Rollins’ Major Crimes Unit is prosecuting the case.