Charlestown man gets five years for robbing a bank where a teller recognized him because he was a customer

A federal judge yesterday sentenced Robert Brady, 42, to five years behind bars for robbing a Cambridge Savings Bank branch in Charlestown on June 28, 2018, the US Attorney's office reports.

Brady pleaded guilty in February to robbing the bank of $912 by walking in with a white mask partially covering his face, putting a black bag in front of two tellers and demanding they fill it with money immediately.

Police pretty quickly caught up to him, less than a half mile from the branch, at Bartlett and Walker streets, thanks to the two GPS devices the teller put in with the money. Police then recovered the money, which he had stuffed down the front of his pants.

And it turns out one of the tellers knew who he was because he was a customer of the branch and she had recently helped him with a credit-card application.

Federal prosecutors had asked for a 6 1/4-year sentence because Brady had a long history of federal convictions, starting with a sentence of more than seven years - when he was just 19 - for refusing to testify in a murder case.

Brady has had numerous opportunities, while in and out of prison to take advantage of programs which, would aid him with these various issues. It is truly unfortunate, that it appears the only time Brady is not involved in criminal activity or drug use is when he is incarcerated. The Government’s recommendation, while severe, appears to be the only solution to curbing this behavior.

His attorney, though, pleased for leniency, and a sentence of no more than four years because, he wrote, Brady had made great strides in his battle with addiction - he had not been arrested since 2013 - and because a brain injury in December, 2014, which left him "without a pulse for 10 minutes," had left him with a wide variety of mental and physical ailments, including "significant weaknesses in attention, executive functions (including impulse control and cognitive efficiency), language, and learning/memory."

Robert Brady’s hopelessness, impulsivity, and reduced ability to organize his daily life are all evident in the choice to rob his own bank. Despite the fact that Mr. Brady wore a mask, one of the tellers recognized Mr. Brady specifically because they had recently discussed Mr. Brady obtaining a credit card.

Robbing one’s own bank, where the employees can identify your voice, shows even less rational thought than an addict who passes a note to feed a habit. There is no shortage of banks within walking distance of Mr. Brady’s own. This decision reveals the impulsivity that is a documented symptom of his injury. Indeed, when Mr. Brady confessed to the crime he stated that he only made the decision to rob the bank earlier that very day.

The decision to rob one’s own bank, where the employees know your voice and your identity, begs the question of whether Mr. Brady became so overwhelmingly hopeless in his inability to function normally that committed a crime in order to get caught. Mr. Brady himself wonders if this was a subconscious motivation in the spur of the moment. In addition to his mental illness, addiction, and impaired functioning, he is also a person who became an adult during an 87-month prison sentence.