LEXINGTON PARK, Md. – A member service representative at Cedar Point FCU was sentenced to civilian custody this week because of her pregnancy after pleading guilty to helping plan the 2004 armed robbery of $262,000 by her boyfriend at the credit union’s Leonardtown branch.
Martha Thompson, 29, who has four young children and is pregnant with a fifth, was sentenced to serve 18 months in custody at a shelter facility. Thompson was sentenced to two concurrent 10-year prison terms, suspended to the 18-month sentence and five years of supervised probation because of her physical condition.
Thompson confessed to helping her then-boyfriend, Cornelius Chase, plot the heist. Chase, 49, was sentenced last year to life in prison without the possibility of parole and ordered to pay $262,000 in restitution, minus $47,300 that police seized from his motel room.
“It was clear it was an inside job,” said the prosecutor. “She was working at the bank and going out with one of the robbers.”
Thompson and two other employees originally testified that a pair of masked gunmen came out of a cornfield and accosted them and forced them into the branch.
Thompson later confessed her role in the hold-up, telling prosecutors that she told the robbers when an armored vehicle brought money to the credit union, and what time employees would arrive to go inside the next morning.
Thompson’s plea agreement allows her to serve her sentence beginning later this month at the shelter facility, with work-release privileges. “She has four children, and she’s pregnant,” said the prosecutor.
A third suspect was at one time charged through the investigation, but those charges were dropped.
Chase was arrested at the time of the motel raid carried out during detectives' initial investigation of the holdup, but prosecutors dismissed the first set of charges against him as they began trying to link the seized money to the credit union. After his release from custody, Chase robbed a pair of convenience stores in 2005, and his guilty pleas in those cases led to a 10-year prison sentence.
Chase eventually was indicted again in the credit union case in 2006.
