A federal judge in October sentenced two people who were involved in a string of Solano and Northern California bank robberies between 2023 and 2024.
Chief U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley sentenced Dontae Jerome Jones, 21, to 28 months in federal prison and JoMya Mauriyne Futch, 21, to two years, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department’s Eastern District of California in Sacramento.
Their sentences came as Jones and Futch on April 17 each pleaded to one count of bank robbery. They had faced as much as 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the bank robbery conviction. Futch also faced a maximum prison term of five years and a $250,000 fine for a perjury conviction.
A co-defendant, Yasmin Charisse Millett, 22, pleaded on March 13 to one count of bank robbery and was sentenced July 10 to two years and four months.
As previously reported, between June 2023 and September 2024, Jones and Millett conspired to commit at least 10 bank robberies in Vallejo, Benicia, Suisun City, Concord, Antioch and Sacramento, according to court documents.
They worked together and with others, primarily women they recruited, such as Futch, “to facilitate a patterned series of bank robberies,” according to wording in a press statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The participants drove to bank and credit union branches, entered the branches with threatening notes demanding money, presented the notes to branch employees, took cash, and exited the branches to a waiting getaway car. Generally, the notes would instruct the bank employees to provide money or “I will kill everyone in here.”
Jones and Millett actively sought and groomed recruits to act as the note passers. Millett advertised the conspiracy on Instagram in videos and photographs of herself and other participants holding large amounts of cash. Jones and Millett sometimes directed recruits to wear dark sunglasses during the robberies to conceal their identities and carry purses in order to carry the stolen money away from the banks and credit unions.
At the time, then-acting U.S. Attorney Michele Beckwith noted that on July 17, 2023, Jones and Millett used a stolen white Audi A7 with dark-tinted windows to pick up Futch and commit a bank robbery at a credit union in Suisun City. Jones and Millett provided Futch with instructions on how to commit the robbery.
Jones and Millett waited in the vehicle, while Futch entered the bank and handed an employee a note demanding money, while threatening to shoot the employee if the employee did not comply. After reading the note, the employee gave Futch money. She returned to the waiting getaway vehicle and Jones, Millett, and Futch each took a portion of the stolen money.
The next day, law enforcement conducted a traffic stop of the stolen white Audi A7. Millett was driving the stolen car and Jones was the front-seat passenger. During the traffic stop, law enforcement officers found bait money on Millett and Jones from the bank robbery that occurred the day before in Suisun City. The officers also found a crumpled Post-it demand note on the driver’s seat that stated, “Don’t Make eye contact Don’t look suspicious Don’t Push emergency Button Put smile on your face or I will shoot.”
On Aug. 15, 2024, Futch appeared as a witness under oath before a grand jury “and knowingly made false statements,” according to Beckwith.
During her testimony, Futch stated that on July 17, 2023, she believed that she was going to open up a bank account for Millett — not commit a robbery. Futch “further claimed that she had no clue that she was committing a bank robbery,” and maintained throughout her testimony that she did not know about any plan to commit a bank robbery, Beckwith noted in the statement.
However, these statements were false, she added, because Millett informed Futch about her plans to commit a bank robbery in the days leading up to July 17, 2023, and Futch had agreed to commit bank robberies with Millett and Jones.
The case stemmed from an investigation by FBI field offices in San Francisco and Sacramento, with assistance from police departments in Vacaville, Vallejo, Benicia, Suisun City, Antioch, Concord, Hayward, Fremont, and Sacramento, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, and the California Highway Patrol.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Whitnee Goins led the prosecution.