FBI agent outines ATM robbery plot
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday played surveillance videos and recordings of dozens of tapped phone conversations for jurors as they outlined how four suspected robbers aided in a “methodically and meticulously” planned ATM heist and attack that was thwarted by law enforcement.
Authorities suspect that Redrick Batiste was the leader of a ring that committed a string of brazen heists involving ATM ma-
chines in the Houston area in 2016. Batiste was killed in a shootout with police after a SWAT team conducting a sting operation broke up what prosecutors say was the last robbery attempt, of an Amegy Bank of Texas branch on Dec. 7, 2016.
Police believe that Batiste fatally shot two security couriers from a distance in separate incidents prior to the unsuccessful robbery, and two of the defendants are charged in the second deadly heist. All four are charged in the thwarted December 2016 robbery attempt.
On the first day of testimony in the trial, FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Coughlin said the recordings show how the defendants scoped out the Amegy Bank branch and went over details of the plan. Coughlin said Batiste planned to serve as a sniper, following a pattern
of shooting the armored truck courier stocking an ATM, and then sending someone to grab the money.
The agent linked the defendants’ cellphone numbers to tapped phone conversations riddled with expletives and code words, which Coughlin translated for the jury.
Peanuts, walnuts and cashews meant money, he said. Care packages were burner phones. Go carts were slang for stolen cars, according to Coughlin. And commissary was the word for an armored truck.
“Commissary pullin’ up right now,” said a caller identified by the agent as defendant Marc Anthony Hill, the alleged lookout. The witness said the conversation corresponded to a video extracted from Hill’s cellphone of an armored truck unloading at an Amegy Bank branch on Nov. 30, 2016. It was the same branch that Batiste and his crew allegedly attempted to rob days later, on Dec. 7, prosecutors argued.
The prosecution also played secret surveillance footage from outside Batiste’s house and inside a stolen vehicle that corresponded with the time stamp on the phone calls.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather Winter said police began surveillance after a tipster told investigators that Batiste was the gunman in a fatal robbery on Aug. 29, 2016 involving an ATM at a Wells Fargo at U.S. 290 and Hollister. As courier David Guzman lay dying after being shot, defendant Nelson Alexander Polk drove up and a third man scooped up bags containing what turned out to be $120,000, according to prosecutors. Winter said testimony would
show that Polk’s and Hill’s cellphones were tracked to the area, establishing they had scoped out the bank, and that Hill’s phone could be traced to the vicinity of the bank during the deadly heist.
Polk’s lawyer, Nicole DeBorde, described Batiste in her opening argument as a flashy, dynamic man who had a secret criminal side. She said Polk had no idea that what he was doing to help his friend was criminal. Hill, who is Polk’s uncle and is representing himself at trial, said he had been doing something unrelated in the area of the deadly robbery and had no role in the crime. Both men also denied involvement in the failed robbery on Dec. 7 at the Amegy bank branch.
The FBI agent also testified that defendants John Edward Scott and Bennie Charles Phillips, Jr. could be traced to a number of conversations with Batiste in November 2016 in which they hatched plans for the December 2016 heist. Special Agent Coughlin said that Scott helped with plans to steal a rental car and rent a hotel room.
Scott’s lawyer, George Michael DeGeurin, Jr., said his client’s only error was doing favors unknowingly for Batiste, a friend since childhood. Scott didn’t have any idea Batiste was involved in crime.
According to the FBI agent, Phillips was tasked with recruiting the man who would grab the cash at the bank. Phillips’ lawyer, David Cunningham, argued that his client played no role whatsoever in the thwarted Amegy bank heist.
Batiste is also suspected in the March 2016 fatal shooting of Loomis security courier Melvin Moore, who was gunned down while stocking an ATM at the J.P. Morgan Chase branch on Airline Drive. Prosecutors did not present evidence on Tuesday about that slaying.