A Houston man who played getaway driver for a crew targeting ATM technicians across southeast Texas has been convicted in federal court, closing the book on what prosecutors say was a high-dollar jugging spree. After a four-day trial, jurors in the Eastern District of Texas returned a guilty verdict on Thursday, following an investigation that ended with officers pulling over a black truck in Houston and finding a hefty pile of cash tied to the robberies. The case lands squarely in the middle of a growing federal crackdown on organized ATM jugging crews.
Verdict, charges and the cash recovered
As reported by MyTexasDaily, jurors found Charles Bernard Byrd guilty of conspiracy to commit bank robbery and aiding and abetting bank robbery. Prosecutors say officers stopped a black truck in Houston and discovered roughly $146,000 inside, then linked that vehicle to a Dec. 31, 2024 robbery of an Education First Federal Credit Union ATM in Beaumont and to an Oct. 8, 2024 ambush of a PNC ATM repairman that netted about $153,000. Co-defendants Kendrick Douglas Warren, Derrick Deshaun Brooks and Derramy Deonita Foster pleaded guilty last September in related federal cases, according to court filings and that report.
Federal push against “jugging” and multi-agency probe
Prosecutors said the defendants were tied to a Houston gang known as 100% Third Ward, or “103,” and credited a joint investigation involving the Beaumont Police Department and the FBI, with backup from the Houston Police Department’s criminal apprehension team. The U.S. Attorney’s Office cast the case as part of the Justice Department’s national effort to lean on organized crews, citing the Department of Justice’s U.S. Department of Justice initiative known as Operation Take Back America, which pools federal resources against violent and organized crime. Federal courts in Texas have increasingly treated jugging robberies, where crews stalk and rob ATM technicians, as serious interstate cases, and the Northern District of Texas recently sentenced a Houston defendant in a similar technician-targeting scheme. The Houston Chronicle has also tracked task-force arrests around the region as law enforcement zeroes in on jugging rings.
Legal stakes for the defendants
Byrd now faces as much as 25 years in federal prison, according to prosecutors, and the case was brought by Assistant U.S. Attorneys John B. Ross and Jonathan Lee. His co-defendants, who admitted to conspiracy and bank-robbery counts last September, await sentencing under their plea agreements. Prosecutors’ filings peg the totals at roughly $146,000 seized during the Houston traffic stop and about $153,000 taken in the earlier Beaumont attack, more than $299,000 in all, according to MyTexasDaily…