ALBANY — Jesse Clarence Odum, 35, of Pensacola, Florida, pled guilty on Thursday, Oct. 8 to an indictment charging him with robbing a Pioneer Bank branch in 2015.
As part of his guilty plea, Odum admitted that on May 2, he entered the Pioneer Bank branch located at 184 Delaware Avenue in Delmar, New York, stopped at a counter, wrote a note, and approached a teller. Odum then passed the teller the note, which instructed her to be silent and give him $10,000. The teller partially complied, and Odum fled the bank with $5,000 in cash.
Odum was subsequently arrested on May 26, 2015, by BPD officers, in the vicinity of the same Pioneer Bank branch.
The announcement was made by Acting United States Attorney Antoinette T. Bacon; Janeen DiGuiseppi, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Chief Gina F. Cocchiara of the Bethlehem Police Department.
Then Det. Sgt. Adam Hornick was the Bethlehem police officer who arrested Odum in 2015. In his report, Odum had stepped into the same Pioneer Bank wearing sunglasses and a hood. When a bank employee asked him to remove them, he turned around and walked away. Noting the act as suspicious, the bank called the police.
Hornick arrived in time to see Odum walking out of another bank and towards the back alley of the mall before calling out to him. When Odum turned around, Hornick said he recognized him as the person wanted for the bank robbery a few weeks before. After a search and an arrest, Hornick reportedly found a note on Pioneer Bank letterhead stating a bank robbery.
Hornick would later receive the department’s gallantry award. He is now a commander with the department.
This case was investigated by the FBI and the Bethlehem Police Department, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emmet O’Hanlon.
Odum faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a term of post-imprisonment supervised release of up to 3 years when he is sentenced by United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino on February 4, 2022. A defendant’s sentence is imposed by a judge based on the particular statute the defendant is charged with violating, the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other factors.
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