If at first you don’t succeed.
A serial bank robber sentenced on Tuesday is headed back to prison for 20 years after sticking up 10 banks months after his release from a 22-year stint behind bars for … robbing banks.
Todd Eugene Cannady of Palm Springs, Calif., “took great joy in his crimes,” prosecutors said, shouting out things like “John Dillinger lives!” and “Bikers rule, baby!” as he ripped off banks all around southern California over the past 40 years.
“[His] enjoyment, predilection, and compulsion is clear: after serving a 262-month sentence for armed bank robbery, [Cannady] was discharged and began this new bank robbery spree within four months of [him] beginning supervised release,” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
A message left with Cannady’s attorney wasn’t immediately returned.
Cannady’s life of crime dates back to 1982, when he started sticking up stores around Los Angeles, according to court records. In 1987, he graduated to bank robbery, holding up a string of banks, before being arrested and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
When he was released in 2018, he went right back at it again, holding up nine banks over the next two years, including one Wells Fargo & Co. WFC, +1.27% bank branch in Rancho Mirage that he stuck up twice, prosecutors said.
“Of the last 40 years, he has been sentenced to over 38 years in prison. And yet, during his short periods of freedom, he has managed to rob at least 12 banks, nine individuals, and various commercial stores,” prosecutors wrote.
Cannady was finally busted again in 2021 after robbing a Chase bank branch in Riverside, California, where he forced his way into the teller’s booth using a “ghost gun,” to threaten employees. Prosecutors say he snatched over $ 150,000 before leading police on high-speed chase in which he crashed into several cars before flipping his vehicle over on Interstate 215.
Over the course of Cannady’s most recent robbery spree, he stole over $ 750,000, prosectors said. Cannady pleaded guilty in October 2021 to one count of armed bank robbery and one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence.
At sentencing in federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. said it was “hard to imagine crimes that are more serious. The court has seen them, but this ranks in the higher order of seriousness.”
Blumenthal sentenced Cannady to 19 ½ years in prison — when Cannady will be in his 80s.