FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 A member of an ATM robbery crew, Maite Celis Silva, 27, of Chile, pleaded guilty on Monday to bank robbery and conspiracy to commit bank robbery arising from a string of robberies of banks and ATMs throughout California, Oregon, and Washington, U.S.\u00a0Attorney Eric Grant announced.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Celis and her co-defendants were part of a South American theft group that conspired to break into and steal money from financial institutions between May and October of 2024. To assist her co-conspirators, Celis rented short-term vacation properties near the banks and ATMs that the crew intended to target.<\/p>\n
Those vacation rental properties served as staging locations for the robberies.<\/p>\n
The conspirators rented cars on the black market to transport themselves to and from the robbery locations.<\/p>\n
Once they identified ATMs in vulnerable locations, they then used construction-crew disguises, blowtorches, and cellphone jammers, among other sophisticated tactics, to break into the banks and ATMs and steal cash.<\/p>\n
The total loss amount caused by the conspiracy while Celis was a participant was more than $5.5\u00a0million.<\/p>\n
Nine others are currently charged for their roles in the conspiracy. The charges against those defendants are only allegations; they are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n
Celis is set for sentencing on June 1, 2026, by U.S. District Judge Kirk E. Sherriff. Celis faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison for bank robbery and five years in prison for conspiracy to commit bank robbery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 A member of an ATM robbery crew, Maite Celis Silva, 27, of Chile, pleaded guilty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-172496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}