Man Faces Prison for Robbing a Florida CU to Fund His Film Production About God
Nacoe Ray Brown, who was released from prison after committing a string of bank robberies in 2001, faces up to 23 years.
A Baltimore, Md., man will be sentenced in April after admitting he robbed a Florida credit union because he allegedly ran out of money while producing a film about finding God in prison.
In January, 54-year-old Nacoe Ray Brown pleaded guilty to bank robbery and to violating the terms of his supervised release on a previous conviction of robbing three banks in the Baltimore area in 2001 to fund his financially struggling gospel dinner theater, according to federal court documents.
On June 28, 2022, while visiting Florida, Brown robbed the Belle Isle branch of the $922 million McCoy Federal Credit Union based in Orlando, federal prosecutors said. Wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, a surgical style face mask and plastic gloves, he walked into the branch, handed a teller a $100 bill and asked that it be exchanged for small bills.
After the teller declined his request because the $100 bill was marked as “play money,” Brown handed a note to the teller that read, “Keep smiling. I have a gun. Give me all of your $100’s, $50’s, $20’s, $5’s. No.$1. Don’t push alarm.”
After he fled the branch with $4,296 in cash, another credit union employee watched Brown as he headed to a gas station where he changed his clothes and walked to a nearby hotel where he was later apprehended by Belle Isle police, court documents showed.
He admitted to police that he committed the bank robbery because he was filming a movie in Florida and had run out of money to pay for the production, federal prosecutors said. The film was reportedly about “finding God” and was based on one of the 15 books Brown wrote while he was in prison, according to a news report posted on MarketWatch. He was behind bars for a string of 2001 bank robberies that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars.
During a 2002 trial, a cooperating witness for the prosecution testified that Brown said “God gave him the idea to rob banks to fund his financially struggling gospel dinner theater,” Shekinah’s Place on Gilford Avenue, The Baltimore Sun reported. The testifying witness also said he assisted Brown in the bank robberies because he thought Brown was a prophet.
A federal judge sentenced Brown to 25 years in prison and ordered him to pay nearly $379,000 in restitution.
In September 2020, he was granted a compassionate release from federal prison. Before he robbed McCoy, court documents showed Brown was failing to comply with certain conditions of his release, such as not making restitution payments.
He remains in federal custody while awaiting his April sentence hearing.
Brown faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years for the credit union robbery and up to three years for violating conditions of his supervised release, according to federal prosecutors.
His lawyers did not respond to CU Times‘ request for comment on Tuesday.