NORTHAMPTON – An Agawam woman was sentenced Monday to three years in state prison for her role in two bank robberies in South Hadley and Ware in 2016.
Frances Deleon, 24, pleaded guilty in Hampshire Superior Court to five counts of armed robbery and will receive credit for 666 days for time already served in jail.
The bank robberies occurred on March 28, 2016, at the then-Chicopee Savings Bank in South Hadley and on April 2, 2016, at the Monson Savings Bank in Ware. In both instances, Deleon scouted the banks before Edgardo Rivera went into the banks with his face covered, wielding what appeared to be a firearm, and demanded cash from the tellers working at the time. Approximately $10,000 was stolen from the two banks.
Deleon testified against co-defendants Jahira Flores, 32, and Rivera, 34, both of Springfield, under a cooperating agreement with prosecutors.
Flores was found guilty of three counts of unarmed robbery and was sentenced to four years of probation for her involvement in the Ware bank robbery. Rivera was convicted in November 2017 of five counts of armed and masked robbery following his trial and was sentenced to eight to 10 years in state prison to be followed by five years of probation.
Justifying Deleon’s sentence, Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Jennifer Suhl said in court that Deleon had a “limited but serious record” which included one adult offense for armed robbery. Suhl said Deleon, working with another man, ordered pizza and then the man robbed the delivery driver. Deleon was on probation for that conviction when she committed the new offenses, Suhl said.
Defense attorney John Drake told the judge that Deleon understood she would be punished for her involvement in the robberies and that she “understood it be state prison time.”
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.