MILWAUKEE — A 24-year-old woman was sentenced last week to three years in prison for taking part in robbing a credit union where she worked.
Jessica Benson pleaded guilty in January to one count of robbery of a financial institution.
The drivers sent a demand note containing a bomb threat and very specific language through the tube to tellers. Tellers at the $1.5 billion-asset CU sent the money while another employee got the license plate of one of the cars and called the police.
As officers arrived, both cars fled and the drivers — Kevin Blackburn and Ricardo Perkins — were arrested after a crash. Police found a Molotov cocktail inside one of the cars. Blackburn and Perkins were later convicted for their roles in the robbery.
Days later, Benson disappeared, and her family made public appeals for help in finding her.
According to the criminal complaint, Benson and her boyfriend, Nathaniel Robinson, recruited Blackburn and Perkins to take part in the robbery two weeks prior to the incident. The complaint also indicated Benson provided them with inside information on the Mount Pleasant, Wis.-based credit union's procedures during a robbery.
Benson was found in northern Illinois last April and extradited to Milwaukee.
"There are two very different Jessica Bensons, certainly, my guess is, to some degree doing battle with each other," Judge William Pocan said before sentencing her to three years in prison, with credit for nearly a year already served, and three years of extended supervision.
Her lawyer and college advisers described her as a 24-year-old graduate of Mount Mary University who had overcome personal struggles to succeed, only to be brought down by an abusive boyfriend who coerced her into the robbery.
Prosecutors and her former co-workers, however, told of a woman motivated by greed who traumatized those around her when she orchestrated the crime.
Though Robinson is more "sophisticated than her in the criminal sense" and has a criminal background, he has not been charged in the robbery, according to Assistant District Attorney Lucy Kronforst.
"I don't feel as though there's enough evidence to charge him because I don't believe a lot of what Jessica has said, and I wouldn't feel comfortable putting her on the stand to be a strong witness" against him, Kronforst told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
