Tennessee man pleads guilty during trial to bank robbery

Published 9:00 am Monday, February 3, 2020

MEMPHIS (AP) — A Tennessee man charged with robbing a federal credit union entered a guilty plea while his trial was still underway, prosecutors said.

Arnold Eden, 52, pleaded guilty to bank robbery before trial lawyers could finish offering proof that he robbed Hope Federal Credit Union in Memphis in July 2017, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release Thursday.

Prosecutors said a man identified later as Eden gave a teller a note saying he had a gun, had “nothing to lose,” and he wanted “two stacks of hundreds,” the teller said.

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The teller complied and gave him $2,602 in cash. Eden was arrested after fingerprints taken from a glass door in the bank were tested and matched him.

Hope Credit Union is federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration. Eden faces up to 20 years in prison at sentencing in May.