Man stole nearly $2M in staged bank truck robbery, feds say. Now, he’s going to prison
A Georgia man charged in connection with a fake bank truck robbery in South Carolina is headed to prison, federal prosecutors said.
Terry Tyrone Pollard, 28, was sentenced to more than five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release for what authorities call an “inside job,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina said on June 26.
The sentencing comes more than a year after he was found guilty on charges of conspiracy to commit bank larceny and bank larceny, prosecutors said.
“Terry has been through a lot in this case,” Pollard’s attorney, Cameron Marshall, told McClatchy News in a statement. “He has spent years in detention and was tried twice on these charges, with the first jury coming back 11-1 in favor of acquittal.”
“We disagree with the second jury’s guilty verdict,” Marshall said.
Investigators said Pollard, who’s from Cedartown, Georgia, helped a Garda employee and three others steal $1.9 million in cash during a staged bank truck robbery in North Charleston in 2021.
Pollard was recruited by the Garda worker, who is accused of pretending to be robbed, according to authorities. The group devised the scheme on the social media platform Snapchat, prosecutors said.
McClatchy News reached out to Garda for comment on June 27 but did not immediately receive a response.
On Jan. 16, 2021, Pollard and the others drove more than 350 miles to the Garda employee’s apartment in North Charleston, prosecutors said. They spent time scouting out spots for the “robbery” before landing on an area by a Bank of America ATM, officials said.
The Garda driver parked his truck, and Pollard and the others pretended to rob the employee at gunpoint, prosecutors said.
The trio loaded the cash into black garbage bags, then fled back to Georgia, officials said.
North Charleston police interviewed the Garda truck driver about what happened, according to prosecutors. Investigators called the FBI after they said they grew skeptical about his story.
Hours after the robbery, one of the suspects posted a video to Snapchat of Pollard flashing a “large stack of stolen cash,” prosecutors said. Officers arrested him soon afterward.
Investigators said Pollard, who was previously convicted on an armed robbery charge, called one of his associates from jail days later and asked him to scrub his phone records, according to authorities.
The five people involved, including Pollard, were indicted in connection with the scheme. Four of them pleaded guilty, and Pollard took his case to trial before he was ultimately convicted in March 2023, prosecutors said.
Marshall said Pollard is considering challenging his conviction in a court of appeals.
Cedartown is about a 60-mile drive northwest from downtown Atlanta.
This story was originally published June 27, 2024 at 12:46 PM with the headline "Man stole nearly $2M in staged bank truck robbery, feds say. Now, he’s going to prison."