New Bedford man sentenced to 110 months in prison for robbery

BOSTON (WWLP) – A New Bedford man was sentenced in federal court for a robbery in July 2021 of a Bristol County Savings Bank branch in Dartmouth.

According to the Department of Justice, 44-year-old David A. Frates of New Bedford was sentenced to 77 months in prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $20,000 to the Bristol County Savings Bank for the bank robbery. He was also sentenced to 33 months in prison for committing the offense while on federal supervised release for a previous bank robbery conviction, for a total term of 110 months in prison.

Frates was arrested and charged with the July 19, 2021 robbery of the Bristol County Savings Bank back on July 21, 2021, and has remained in custody since then. He pleaded guilty back in March 2022.

On July 19th, Frates entered a Bristol County Savings Bank branch in Dartmouth and demanded a teller for $20,000. The teller handed him the money from the bank’s vault, and he then left the bank. After an investigation identified that it was Frates, he was arrested two days later.

 When he was arrested, Frates was in possession of over $9,000 in cash.

Frates was convicted in 2015 of federal bank robbery charges for the armed robbery of a St. Anne’s Credit Union branch in New Bedford and was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but that sentence was reduced to 81 months in prison in May 2020 based, in part, on changes in the United States Sentencing Guidelines.