A 42-year-old Española man will spend 12 years in federal prison after being sentenced for robbing an ATM repair man and getting away with $187,340.
Michael Cobb was initially arrested on Jan. 20, 2022, following a police pursuit in Pojoaque and ordered to be held without bail.
He was later indicted on bank robbery with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence and discharging it on Feb. 8, 2022.
It took two years before Cobb pleaded guilty to bank robbery with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, on Nov. 26, 2024.
That plea deal, signed by prosecutor Kimberly Bell, set his sentence at 12 years. He was finally sentenced three years later, on June 18 and owes $102,320 in restitution.
The Robbery
FBI Task Force Officer Byron Abeyta wrote in an affidavit for a criminal complaint that the Española Police Department responded to the robbery on Jan. 15, 2022, at Century Bank on North Riverside Drive, and a got a report that a red hatchback was involved.
The victim told officers he was working on the ATM when the hatchback pulled up, a man got out, demanded he give him the money, then pointed a gun at him. The victim heard a popping sound, but didn’t believe it was a gun. He backed away from the ATM and the man grabbed four cash boxes and left, he wrote.
When he reviewed the footage, he saw a man get out of a Chevy Sonic hatchback with aftermarket wheels and point a black pistol at the ATM technician. The technician took a step back in the video, the man racked the slide on the pistol and pointed it at him again. The technician moved away from the ATM, the man grabbed two money canisters, loaded them into his car and fired a single shot to the right of the ATM.
He then grabbed two more canisters and drove away, Abeyta wrote.
Officers found the car was registered to Michael Cobb’s father.
When they went to his house, his father told officers that it was his wife’s vehicle and his son had possession of it for months and had been out of jail for six months.
The Pojoaque Tribal Police Department received a notification on Jan. 19 that the car was parked at the Buffalo Thunder casino. They tried to stop Cobb, but he fled and they pursued and “were able to stop the vehicle on State Road 502,” Abeyta wrote.
They found $921 on his person, he wrote, but it was never determined whether it was money stolen from the ATM.
In a motion to suppress the search of the car, Cobb’s attorney, federal public defender Daniel Snyder, wrote that the vehicle was being tracked through the “target alert system” by license plate readers in the state.
While Abeyta described Pojoaque Tribal Police Officers being “able to stop” the vehicle, Snyder wrote that they stopped the car by “slamming into the passenger side rear panel” and pulled Cobb out of the car with guns drawn.
They broke his prescription glasses in the process.
Court documents do not state how much, if any money was recovered.