Sovereign Bank

Police say two men with a shotgun robbed the Sovereign Bank on Roosevelt Boulevard near Welsh Road yesterday. It was reportedly the sixth robbery in the area recently.

Convicted earlier of twice invading homes of bank managers, taking their families hostage, and forcing them at gunpoint to open bank vaults, John D. "Jonathan" Hall yesterday swore he was innocent. "I never hurted no one in my life," Hall told U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam. "I have feelings and also have a heart, too, your honor," Hall pleaded, suggesting he wasn't into such violent crimes. The judge wasn't impressed. "You certainly haven't demonstrated it so far," the judge replied, sentencing the defendant to 53 years in prison without chance of parole.

An armed man forced his way into the Sovereign Bank branch in the Dresher Shopping Center about a half-hour before it opened yesterday, bound several employees with duct tape, and escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash. No one was hurt in the 8:30 a.m. robbery, authorities said. Linda Vizi, an FBI spokeswoman, said the man approached several bank employees as they entered the building at Dreshertown Road and Limekiln Pike in Montgomery County. "He ushered them by point of gun into the bank, tied them, and duct-taped them," she said.

Deborah Kerr and her husband, Sean, felt some relief yesterday as they watched a jury convict two local men of taking them and their 4-month-old daughter as hostages so they could rob $108,000 from a bank Kerr managed. "I'll never work at a bank again. . .It did my career in," Kerr said of the ordeal. "I hope they get the maximum sentence, just so it can't happen again, to anyone else," Kerr, 28, now a full-time homemaker, told a reporter. The defendants, John D. "Jonathan" Hall, 29, and Saeed Massaquoi, 28, both of Philadelphia, showed no emotion when the jury found them guilty of two armed bank robberies, both involving home invasions.

A local man's criminal career caught up with him yesterday when he was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison by a federal judge for four unarmed bank robberies that netted him $10,572. Fred Lee Gordon Jr., 33, had pleaded guilty earlier to the bank heists and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner as a "career offender" because of two prior convictions for burglary. The career offender status added at least two years and four months to Gordon's punishment.

To prevent financial indigestion, Sovereign Bank will buy its way into New England in bite-sized chunks - and take its time paying. The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision yesterday approved Sovereign's $1.4 billion purchase of surplus New England offices of the newly merged FleetBoston Corp., contingent on 18 conditions. "It's a huge transaction, compared to their existing franchise," said Scott Albinson, the agency's managing director for supervision. He said that Sovereign will double its branch network and its deposit base.

Any day now, Sovereign Bancorp expects to get word from federal regulators on whether its controversial plan to buy nearly 300 Fleet Bank offices in New England is a go. Sovereign originally predicted that the deal would be done by March. But with Wall Street questioning Sovereign's finances, the bank has been pushing a revised plan that would let it acquire the branches in stages over the summer. While Sovereign had expected to make an announcement last week, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision was still mulling the modified plan yesterday.

A Philadelphia man has been charged in two bank robberies in which employees were taken at gunpoint from their homes and forced to open safes at the branches where they worked, federal officials announced yesterday. Saeed Massaquoi, 28, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted on all charges, including two counts of bank robbery and two counts of conspiracy. Police are seeking a second man in the two robberies. On Jan. 12, 1999, two men wearing wigs and fake beards kidnapped a bank employee at her home about 7 a.m. and forced her to drive one of them to Sovereign Bank in Springfield Township, Montgomery County, according to a detailed affidavit filed by an FBI investigator.

For Bucks County River Country, a rafting and tubing service, the most frustrating thing about the drought is not a lack of water but an over-abundance of media coverage. A torrent of drought stories on the evening news and in the papers has given people the idea that it is not safe or possible to enjoy a lazy, refreshing float down the river, said River Country employee John Jenness. "The problem with the drought is groundwater levels," he said, a bit frustrated after explaining to hundreds of callers in the last month that the river is just fine.

Last week, Frank Wlodarczyk's dream came true: He and three colleagues bought the printing business they once helped manage. But they needed help: Sovereign Bank would not lend them enough to cover the entire $4.5 million price tag of Pomco Graphics and its building because the assets in the business were worth just $3.75 million. So the group, which had a combined 58 years at the 21-year-old company, still needed $750,000. That's when the Penn SE Mezzanine Fund stepped in. Sovereign, one of six participating banks in the fund, referred the group to the Mezzanine Fund for the balance.