Man Who Had Prostitutes Rob Valley Banks Heads To Prison

LOS ANGELES, CA — A Los Angeles pimp who had prostitutes robbing banks across the San Fernando Valley while he was in prison and on GPS monitoring was sentenced to five years in prison Monday.

Robert Michael St. John, 49, a career criminal who already served time for orchestrating bank robberies committed by prostitutes was sent back for prison for doing it again. In sentencing documents, prosecutors tore into him for the brazen nature of his crimes. The outlined his fall from exclusive schools to the criminal underworld.

St. John attended a highly regarded Catholic high school and studied at American University in Washington, D.C. But "rather than use his education and talents to contribute to society, defendant has taken advantage of vulnerable women for the past 22 years," according to a sentencing memorandum filed in Los Angeles federal court.

"In 1997, defendant sustained multiple felony convictions for pimping and other sexual crimes involving violence, young women and drugs. Despite a sentence of 11 years' imprisonment for his crimes, defendant failed to follow the rules of the state court and violated the terms of his parole multiple times," the document says. "A substantial prison sentence and GPS monitoring did not deter defendant from committing additional crimes with vulnerable women."

In fact, prosecutors say St. John recruited women to commit robberies for him when he was still behind bars. For those Los Angeles-area robberies, he was sentenced to eight years in federal prison, yet was undeterred from "engaging in abhorrent criminal conduct that preyed upon women" and recruited co-defendant Michelle Edwards to rob banks while he was still behind bars, the document says.

As soon as he got out of prison, he went right back to his violent crimes, according to court records. When St. John was discharged from state prison, he recruited prostitutes to rob banks for him 13 times, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"Eager to return to his life of crime, defendant planned to rob a bank on his first day out of prison," prosecutors wrote. "A few weeks later, defendant conducted an armed bank robbery himself, pointing a gun at a victim's head and threatening to blow his ... head off."

St. John then convinced Edwards to conduct six stick-ups throughout the San Fernando Valley during the summer of 2017, supplying the weapon, providing step-by-step instructions prior to the heists, and giving Edwards real-time instructions through a headset and cell phone during the robberies while he waited in the getaway car, according to federal prosecutors.

Edwards and co-defendant Cheatham were arrested on Sept. 11, 2017, while St. John was on his way to rob an eighth bank, according to the sentencing memo, which says his sister is employed as an attorney for the Federal Communications Commission.

St. John pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery. Edwards pleaded guilty to conspiracy and multiple armed bank robbery counts and is expected to sentenced on June 24. Cheatham is scheduled to be sentenced in July on the conspiracy count, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

He was also ordered by U.S. District Judge S. James Otero to pay about $86,000 in restitution and serve three years under supervised release after he is released from federal prison.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.