Penn Hills man who plotted bank heists sent to prison

The planner and getaway driver for a series of armed bank robberies asked a judge Friday to spare him federal prison so he could rehabilitate himself and reaffirm the judge’s “faith in humanity,” but she declined and sent him to the lockup for nearly five years.

U.S. marshals led Daymon Ottey out of U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon’s courtroom to start his 57 months behind bars.

The judge said Ottey, 29, of Penn Hills, already benefited from the fact that the U.S. Attorney’s office decided not to seek an enhanced sentence, which it could have done.

She told him she hopes he takes advantage of the various programs in the prison system to beat drug and alcohol addiction, learn a trade and become the role model for his newborn that he says he wants to be.

Otherwise, she said, he’ll end up in front of her or another federal judge someday.

“You’re at a crossroads,” she said. “I hope our paths don’t cross again.”

Ottey and Bryan Campbell, 28, of Crafton, robbed two banks in Plum and Verona and tried to rob a third in Beaver County in 2017. Ottey planned the heists and served as the driver, using his girlfriend’s car, and Campbell went inside with a gun and terrorized people. He has pleaded guilty and is facing seven years.

The case was unusual in two respects: One of the robberies yielded a huge haul of $84,000, and the bandits were undone in part by illadvised online posts that trumpeted their success.

Among the FBI’s evidence are Facebook posts by Campbell’s girlfriend, Desiree LaVette, of the pair frolicking in Florida, eating at fancy restaurants and flaunting jewelry bought right after the heist at First National Bank in Verona on May 1, 2017.

That holdup was a windfall as bank robberies go. Most bank jobs yield a few thousand dollars. But when Campbell went into the First National with a gun in his hand, he saw that the vault was open and so he told a teller to go in there and fill his bag with cash.

He split the money with Ottey, who had planned the caper and an earlier one at S&T Bank in Plum in March. While Campbell used the loot to party with his girlfriend, Ottey put down $6,000 cash for a Jeep Liberty, which the pair used in a third attempted robbery in Baden in July 2017. Campbell went into the bank in Baden and had ordered a teller to take him to the vault when he saw a local police car outside, got spooked and ran.

The FBI eventually caught Ottey in Penn Hills and Campbell in Beaver Falls, and both admitted their crimes in court.

Ottey and his lawyer, William Difenderfer, tried to minimize Ottey’s role, arguing that he’s not as culpable as the gunman.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Lanni said he is. Ottey plotted the holdups and supplied the gun and the vehicles.

“These robberies could not have taken place without Daymon Ottey,” he said. “He must be held accountable for putting these inherently violent crimes in motion and facilitating them at every juncture.”

Campbell is scheduled to be sentenced in February.