A serial bank robber who said he was acting in “desperation” when he threatened to murder an elderly bank customer was sentenced to 15 years in prison Tuesday for the violent 2023 heist.
Gerald DeRosse, 56, was out on parole for less than a month when he walked into a Ridgewood Savings Bank in Glendale, Queens, on April 6, 2023, and grabbed an 81-year-old woman doing business at a teller’s window.
He placed her in a chokehold, then told the teller he would “blow her f—–g brains out” if he didn’t get cash. His score was a paltry $205.
The woman suffered minor injuries and was checked out at the scene by EMS workers, but she refused further medical attention.
DeRosse’s parole officer recognized him from a surveillance photo, and when he showed up at his next parole meeting, he was arrested.
“The defendant, a serial bank robber, chose to terrorize hardworking bank tellers and customers for his own selfish purposes. The victims, including an elderly woman the defendant locked in a chokehold, will never forget that day,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Tuesday.
Gerald DeRosse
DeRosse admitted guilt almost immediately after his arrest, proclaiming “I’m guilty” at his arraignment and saying he was desperate because he couldn’t find a job or even get a two-way MetroCard to go to interviews.
He pleaded guilty to a federal bank robbery charge in May, without a written agreement with prosecutors.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Schuman pointed to DeRosse’s criminal history, which includes several bank robberies over the past three decades. DeRosse committed five bank heists in 1993, then three more after he was released to parole in 2010.
“The defendant’s conduct here is not an aberration. It is frankly his MO,” Schuman said. “We are talking about someone who regularly and repeatedly committed crimes each and every time he has been released into the community.”
Brooklyn Federal Judge William Kuntz handed down the 15-year sentence Tuesday, giving DeRosse the high end of the amount of time recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.
The maximum sentence is 20 years, which Kuntz pointed out after noting that the case would go back to him if the sentence was overturned on appeal.
DeRosse’s lawyer, Nora Hirozawa of the Federal Defenders, unsuccessfully argued that he should get less than six years because of his long history of trauma, abuse and mental illness. DeRosse was beaten by his father as a child, and was first sentenced to state prison at age 17, an experience that scarred him and exacerbated the anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder that plague him to this day, Hirozawa said.
He turned to drug abuse, and despite a 2011 suicide attempt at Rikers Island, he didn’t start getting mental health help until last year, Hirozawa said.
“Your Honor, I can’t explain to you what I did, and I’m sorry,” DeRosse said Tuesday. “I need the help out there, because I get confused and scared sometimes. I know given the chance I will never come back here.”
DeRosse spent more than a year and a half in the notorious MDC Brooklyn jail after his arrest. Hirozawa said it took 10 months and a judge’s order to get him an albuterol inhaler for his asthma while locked up, and just a few weeks ago, he was badly beaten in his cell by a group of inmates — who, it turned out, mistook him for someone else.