Fifty-nine year old Mark A. Cardinal was sentenced Thursday in Grants Pass, Oregon to a prison term of sixteen years, after stating that the reason for the robberies was precipitated by crushing medical bills. At sentencing, Cardinal also stated that he felt the sentence was far too harsh and that the victims he encountered during his robberies were “well treated.”
Cardinal’s conviction includes twelve banks in both California and Oregon.
In 2013, Cardinal robbed five financial institutions in Josephine County alone. These locations included the JP Morgan Chase Bank at Fred Meyer on both March 13 and September 16, Cave Junction’s Sterling Bank branch on both April 5 and September 13 and the US Bank branch located in the Albertson’s on Allen Creek Road.
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"Bank Robber Seeking Relief From Medical Bills Sentenced".
Police nabbed Cardinal just after his last heist in the town of Kerby. Detectives were at another crime scene, spotted Cardinal driving in the vicinity and were able to take him into custody.
In a statement of some fifteen minutes, Cardinal told a tale of crushing bills, multiple catastrophic medical issues, excruciating physical pain and living with the fear of becoming homeless due to his inability to pay his medical expenses.
During his closing words last Thursday, a remorseful and contrite Cardinal explained to Judge Lindi Baker, in detail, why he committed these crimes and how he went about his actions. “I want the court to know, and the victims to know, I never had any intention whatsoever of hurting them,” Cardinal said. “When I robbed the banks I had an air pistol. I used a piece of paper with instructions.”
Cardinal, whose jail records have him at six feet tall and weighing in at one hundred and thirty four pounds, appeared nearly skeletal during his court appearance. He claims that he has suffered six heart attacks has been very gravely ill for more than three years, without any kind of medical insurance or health benefits whatever.
“I was on life support just before I was arrested,” he said. “The bills were really stacking up. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The bills wouldn’t stop.”
The collection agencies attempting to collect on Cardinal’s medical debts threatened to take his home and Social Security, he said.
“I wasn’t thinking straight,” he continued. “That’s not me. I don’t do things like that. I was robbing banks with my stomach stapled, bleeding, with a colostomy bag because I hadn’t paid those bills.”
Cardinal is shown as having been unemployed for the last ten years, also having a record of criminal activity including several counts of theft and fraud in more than one state in the West.
Cardinal claims that he really doesn’t remember much in the way of the actual events of each robbery, only that he was not menacing with his victims. No gun-waving, verbal abuse or physical violence occurred.
“I remember telling the tellers I was sorry,” he said. “I tried to make it the least painful for them.”
Cardinal stated that he and his wife of many years exhausted every possibility in seeking assistance with the catastrophic medical bills, which seemed to fill their mail box daily. They reached out to a variety of government agencies to no avail, a very dark commentary regarding the days before the institution of national healthcare.
“I walked into a bank, gave them a piece of paper and I walked out, and told them I was sorry,” he said. “I’m not a drug user. My wife isn’t a drug user. Neither of us drink. We’re kind of old-fashioned, really. We sit on the porch and drink lemonade and hold hands.”
Cardinal made the argument that others committing much more serious crimes received significantly lighter sentences that his. Two crimes explicitly brought up were local in nature and meant to show the disparity in sentencing. The two incidents Cardinal compared his sentence to involve a Grants Pass, Oregon man who accidentally killed a five year old child and received a six year sentence for manslaughter as well as another local man, convicted of raping a child, who received a ten year sentence.
“My doctor says, ‘You’re not going to make it,'” he told the judge. “Seven to 10 years max. I received a death sentence from the D.A. for robbing a bank with a piece of paper.”
Judge Baker expressed apprehension toward Cardinal’s statements, since the large amounts of money did, in fact, “belong to someone else.” All of the victims who lost money or were in the bank at the times of Cardinal’s robberies supported incarceration.
