Former welterweight titlist James Page, pled guilty today to a string of San Francisco Bay Area bank robberies, which will see him serve 20 years in prison, after a plea deal was struck.
Page admitted to stealing $20,735 from eight different banks in the area from March 6 to June 9. The 42-year old had also been previously arrested in Atlanta in 2001 for a bank robbery and was released in 2012.
Page earned the WBA 147-pound title in 1998, after he knocked out Andrey Pestryaev and made three successful title defenses, including wins over Freddie Pendleton and Jose Luis Lopez. Before meeting Andrew ?Six Heads? Lewis in 2001, Page was stripped of his title for failing to show up for a mandatory title defense the previous year and would get knocked out by Lewis in the fight. After his release from prison, Page would get KO?d again, this time by Rahman Mustafa Yusubov, in what would be his final bout in 2012.
According to the Bay Area News Group, Page had passed handwritten notes to bank tellers before each robbery, thought he was not armed. His sentencing is scheduled for April 29.
