A 35-year-old Richmond man has pleaded guilty to robbing an East Bay pharmacy at gunpoint and illegally possessing a fully automatic handgun, admitting in federal court that he pointed what turned out to be a paintball gun at a CVS employee before fleeing onto a BART train with a cash drawer worth $247.22.
Mario Robinson admitted in his federal plea agreement that during the July 9, 2024 robbery, he wore a black ski mask and pointed an AR-style paintball gun at an employee behind the counter before stealing the cash drawer and fleeing, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. The office announced the plea on Thursday. As The Mercury News reported, authorities tracked Robinson's movements using a GPS device hidden inside the cash drawer itself, allowing police to follow him even after he boarded the train.
That tracking technology relies on covert units that automatically activate during a robbery and feed real-time location data to dispatchers, according to product documentation from security manufacturer 3SI Security Systems. Officers ultimately arrested Robinson and recovered a duffle bag containing his robbery clothes, the stolen cash drawer, and the AR-style paintball gun, per the same Mercury News account.
A Second, More Dangerous Encounter in the Tenderloin
Robinson's guilty plea also covers a February 25 shooting in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, where he fired a Glock 22 .40-caliber handgun fitted with an illegal conversion device, commonly known as a switch, at a group of people outside a convenience store. In his plea agreement, Robinson admitted to manually racking the slide between single shots when the weapon jammed before successfully firing an automatic multi-round burst, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.
Authorities arrested Robinson near the shooting scene and recovered a .40-caliber pistol he had tossed under a car, the Mercury News reported. Investigators also found seven spent shell casings, three unfired rounds, and a bullet fragment at the scene. Tests later revealed gunshot residue on Robinson's hands and his DNA on the pistol grip, per that report.
Robinson has multiple prior felony convictions, including robberies in California and Louisiana, prosecutors said. A federal grand jury indicted him on April 23, and he ultimately pleaded guilty to robbery affecting interstate commerce, illegal possession of a machine gun, and being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Why a $247 Robbery Landed in Federal Court
The relatively small dollar amount taken from the Pleasanton CVS didn't keep the case out of federal court. The Hobbs Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a), allows federal prosecutors to charge commercial robberies that affect interstate commerce, carrying a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in federal prison regardless of the amount stolen, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.
Machine gun conversion devices like the one Robinson used are treated with similar severity. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1) and ATF regulations, these devices — often called Glock switches or auto-sears — are legally classified as machine guns on their own regardless of whether they're attached to a firearm, carrying a statutory maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the Giffords Law Center. Robinson's felon-in-possession count carries its own exposure: Congress raised that statutory maximum from 10 to 15 years under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, as outlined in federal regulatory updates published by the Federal Register in April 2024.
Altogether, Robinson faces up to 20 years and a $250,000 fine on the robbery count, up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine on the machine-gun count, and up to 15 years and a $250,000 fine on the felon-in-possession count, according to the Mercury News. He remains in federal custody and is scheduled to be sentenced on January 7, 2027, at 1:30 p.m. before U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick III in San Francisco, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Eli J. Cohen leading the prosecution, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced.
A Broader Crackdown on Converted Handguns
ATF data show a 570 percent increase in firearms recovered with machine-gun conversion devices between 2017 and 2021.
The issue has surfaced repeatedly in the Bay Area in recent months. Cupertino disturbance last month, when Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies responded to a disturbance, saw a man slip behind buildings and later tracked down a bag containing a Glock switch. In separate incidents, Richmond police recovered a rifle in an Aberdeen Way incident and a Glock 20 during a later traffic stop.
