TAMPA, Fla. – The serial bank robber known as the Band-Aid Bandit for heists that yielded nearly $1 million was sentenced Friday to 149 years in prison.
"It's a life sentence and it should be," U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday said at the sentencing of Rafael Angel Rondon.
Rondon, 47, received the maximum sentence for six robberies in Florida from 2000 through 2006. He got his nickname because he often wore a bandage to cover a distinctive mole on his face.
Rondon and his sidekick, brother-in-law Emeregildo Roman, 54, were prosecuted in April. A jury convicted them of six counts of armed bank robbery, six counts of illegal use of a firearm and one count of conspiracy.
Merryday ordered both men to pay $676,000 in restitution. Roman was sentenced to 126 years in prison.
After Rondon's arrest last July, agents found adhesive bandages, a distinctive silver .357-caliber revolver similar to the one used by the bandit and almost $90,000 in cash — some wads still wrapped in bank bands — in a search of his home in the Orlando suburb of Clermont.
More cash, disguises and a gun were found in Roman's house in Davenport.
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