A Texas man was sentenced to five years of probation Monday for his role in a failed attempt at stealing an ATM at a Roseville bank with chains and a stolen pickup truck.

Leonard Dwayne Williams, 26, and four other Houston men were charged with aiding and abetting attempted felony theft and felony criminal damage to property in connection with the incident outside Great Southern Bank around 4 a.m. Dec. 12, 2023. Charges against one man were later dismissed for lack of probable cause.

Leonard Dwayne Williams (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

The theft was foiled by an alarm and an officer who pulled up to the scene, where the ATM had been pulled off its foundation and left. No money was stolen from the ATM, police said.

Williams pleaded guilty to the attempted theft charge in September in exchange for a stayed one-year prison sentence and no more than a month in jail.

Williams appeared at Monday’s sentencing via Zoom from a Texas jail, where he is being held for an alleged robbery offense in that state.

Ramsey County District Judge Kellie Charles noted how a camera caught Williams attaching chains to the Roseville ATM. “This was a particularly brazen crime,” Charles said.

Williams has two prior theft convictions in Texas, she said, and “has served time on two other similar thefts involving other co-defendants.”

Great Southern put its initial losses at nearly $75,000, and Charles ordered Williams to pay a fourth of the bank’s $25,000 insurance deductible.

The cases against the co-defendants remain pending, with all three wanted on warrants after they posted bond and then did not return to court for hearings, records show. They are Kenneth Deandtray Brown, Christopher Eugine Merchant and Larry Dean Gill, who are all 24 years of age.

Arrested at nearby hotel

According to the charges, a Roseville police officer went to the bank at 1875 County Road B2 after alarms on the ATM were triggered. The officer saw a white 2006 Ford F-250 pickup leaving the bank’s driveway with chains dragging and sparks flying as it went west on B2. The damaged ATM was left in the bank’s parking lot.

After the truck turned into a nearby business parking lot, the officer flipped on the squad’s emergency lights and the driver, later identified as Brown, sped away, weaving and driving over a median and a large rock. Brown then bailed out of the truck, which continued moving and crashed into a parked car and bus.

Brown ran, but was taken into custody after a chase. His cellphone’s screen showed directions to Key Inn at 2550 Cleveland Ave. N.

Police went to the hotel, where the front desk employee said four men had just entered the hotel lobby and went into a first-floor room, which Brown had rented. Surveillance footage showed the men walking into the hotel lobby about 4:10 a.m.

After they ignored commands to surrender, the SWAT team was called in and a search warrant was granted by a judge. Officers entered through a room window and the men were arrested.

The bank’s security footage showed Merchant use a crowbar on the ATM, and he and Williams attached chains onto it, the charges say. At one point, Gill helped lift the ATM after it fell over.

Other video from a nearby gas station showed a dark-colored SUV going back and forth past the bank 21 times. Police located the SUV, a black Mazda CX‐90 with Texas license plates, in the hotel parking lot.

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Investigators later learned Brown and Williams were seen scoping out a credit union in St. Louis Park in an SUV about an hour before the ATM theft in Roseville. Police also were given a picture of the F-250 backed up to an ATM in St. Louis Park with chains “ready to be deployed,” the charges state.

According to ATMMarketplace.com, ATM thefts began rising in 2021, with “hook and chain attacks” accounting for most of them. A banking security official told the website that thieves consider ATMs worthwhile targets because many of them have a “weakness in the vault door that makes it easier to hook into and open” to get at the cash cassettes.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in October 2023 that the FBI had identified a group of seven Houston men who tried to rob two Chase Bank ATMs with a stolen pickup and chain in Las Vegas in February 2022. One man who was charged told local police they learned how to pull off the heists by watching YouTube videos.