OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – A former boxing champ was sentenced Thursday to more than seven years in prison for a string of bank robberies throughout the East Bay, said officials.
Former WBA welterweight Champion James PagJames Quindale Page plead guilty on Feb. 7, 2014, admitting all six charged bank robberies and two additional bank robberies.
Page, who was on federal supervised release at the time he committed these bank robberies, also admitted that the robberies violated the terms of his supervised release.
Page, 43, of Pittsburg, Calif., was arrested on June 10, 2013.
In his robberies, Page entered the banks and passed the victim tellers notes announcing that he was robbing the bank and making a demand for money.
He was charged by federal criminal complaint on June 11, 2013, and a grand jury returned an indictment charging him with six counts of bank robbery on June 20, 2013.
Page, who has been in custody since his arrest, admitted robbing these banks:
- Robbbed the Chase Bank on March 6, 2012 of $1,856.
- The Wells Fargo bank on March 12, 2013 of $670
- The U.S. Bank on May 24, 2013 of $1,339
- Wells Fargo on May 25, 2013 for $1,600
- Bank of America on May 29, 2013 of $1,507
- Chase Bank on June 3, 2013 of $7,033
- U.S. Bank on June 6, 2013 of $1,280
- Wells Fargo on June 8, 2013 of $5,450
According to a San Jose Mercury News story, Page’s boxing career began at age 8, when older boys in his hometown of Pittsburg would pay him to fight other children, according to court papers. He turned pro at 19 and in 1998 knocked out Russian Andrei Pestriaev in Paris to win the World Boxing Association welterweight title, the newspaper stated.
But boxing had its price for Page. After losing his world championship title, Page was arrested for robbing Atlanta banks and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison, according to the Mercury News.
He attempted a comeback in 2012 after his release but lost his first match, the newspaper stated.
As Page, dressed in yellow prison garb, apologized softly to the bank tellers he menaced during the 2013 robbery spree, his attorney detailed how boxing gave him an escape from a troubled childhood but left him brain-damaged, the Mercury News reported.