A 74-year-old Villager has been sentenced in a bank robbery last year in which he was caught with the loot in a pillow case.
Joseph Vincent Albanese, who lives at 1861 W. Schwartz Blvd. on the Historic Side of The Villages, pleaded no contest this past week in Sumter County Court to a charge of robbery. He has been placed on probation for eight years.
Albanese was arrested Nov. 14 after he walked into the Wells Fargo bank on U.S. Hwy. 441 in Lady Lake and slipped a pre-written note to a bank teller, according to an arrest report from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. The bank teller removed $700 in cash from her drawer and placed it into a pillow case carried in by Albanese. The Newark, N.J. native “kept apologizing” and sat down in the main lobby area. Bank employees quickly evacuated customers out of the lobby. When deputies arrived at the bank, Albanese was still sitting in the lobby with the pillow case. He said Social Security just “cut him off.”
He spent 122 days in the Sumter County Detention Center and was set free this past week after he was sentenced in court.
