A 24-year-old Houston man who treated disabled ATMs like personal vending machines for cash is headed to federal prison for a decade, after a Seattle judge said he was “enjoying a criminal life” in a violent, multi-state robbery ring.
Seth Coles-Body was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in federal prison in Seattle for his role in a coordinated scheme that knocked out ATMs, lured in repair technicians, then ambushed them for the cash inside. He had already admitted to a series of bank robbery charges tied to incidents stretching from the Pacific Northwest to Maine, a spree that left workers hurt and forced law enforcement across several states to team up on the case.
Guilty plea, tough words and a 10-year term
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington, U.S. District Judge James L. Robart handed down the 120-month sentence after Coles-Body pleaded guilty in February to four counts of bank robbery and two counts of attempted bank robbery.
In court, Robart said Coles-Body “was enjoying a criminal life… The conduct was driven by greed and an appetite for money without considering the overall community.” The 10-year sentence, the office noted, resolves federal cases tied to robberies in several different states.
ATM takedowns and technician ambushes
As FBI Houston described it, prosecutors say Coles-Body teamed up with an associate to quietly disable ATMs, then waited for technicians to arrive to fix them. Once a worker opened the machine, the pair used force or threats to grab the cash cassettes packed with bundled currency.
The method relied on breaking the machines just enough to trigger a service call, then turning what looked like a routine repair stop into a high-risk robbery.
Cross-country spree and six-figure hauls
Federal court filings and plea documents outline a run of incidents in Washington, Arizona, Oregon, Texas, Maine and Mississippi. Those include attempted robberies in Renton and Vancouver, Washington, and a March 7, 2025 incident in Redmond where several cash canisters were later found dumped along Highway 520.
U.S. Border Patrol stopped Coles-Body days after that Redmond job with about $209,000 in cash. Prosecutors say the crew had previously stolen roughly $117,000 from a Houston-area Wells Fargo and $47,000 from an ATM in South Portland, Maine. Restitution in the case has been pegged at about $768,900, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Where the sentence lands under federal law
Bank robbery and attempted bank robbery are federal crimes that carry serious time. The statutory maximum for a violation of section 2113 is 20 years in prison, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Coles-Body's 10-year sentence sits squarely within that range. Prosecutors told the court the term reflects both the violence used against technicians and the wide geographic sweep of the scheme.
