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The would-be robber pointed a knife at an employee headed into the Investor’s Savings Bank early Tuesday. “Get inside,” she said in a foreign accent, FBI Special Agent Bryan Travers told CLIFFVIEWPILOT.COM.
The employee signaled to a co-worker already inside not to open the door, then ran off, he said.
The employee inside the Clifton Avenue bank got a good look at the would-be robber, who was described as 5-foot-7, with a thin build. She was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt pulled tight over her face, a black scarf or veil, green pants and leather gloves.
This comes on the same day Norma Balderas-Dehernandez was sentenced in federal court in Trenton for holding two banks in Clifton and one in Passaic before she was caught in the act at another Clifton bank.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano sentenced Balderas-Dehernandez to three years of supervised release and ordered her to pay restitution to the banks that were robbed. Handling the government’s case was Assistant U.S. Attorney Lakshmi Srinivasan Herman of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division in Newark.
It’s not entirely coincidence: Authorities say the ranks of bank-robbing women are rising in step with the overall number of holdups.
From Tampa to San Diego to St. Louis, authorities within just the past few weeks have issued bulletins bearing photos of women robbing banks, hoping someone will recognize the bandits.
And they usually are: FBI stats show that three of every four bank robbers are caught. The bureau makes the crimes a priority, and the U.S. government makes the sentences stiff: up to 25 years, in some instances.
That time is served, too: There’s no parole in the federal prison system.
Talk about equal opportunity.
Balderas-Dehernandez, 36, who apparently owned a shop in Jersey City, admitted to three holdups last year: at the American Bank of New Jersey ($5,000) and the at the PNC Bank in Clifton ($760), and at the Capital One Bank in Passaic ($2,400). CONTINUED….
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