Man gets five years for robbing banks in Lynnfield, Beverly

SALEM – A Woburn man who admitted robbing a bank in Lynnfield and another in Beverly during a three-week crime spree in 2005 to feed his heroin addiction will spend up to five years in state prison.Paul Chiumento, 24, who last lived at 17 James St., in Woburn, changed his plea to guilty Friday afternoon in Salem Superior Court, confessing to two counts of unarmed robbery before Judge Richard E. Welch, III.He was sentenced to serve not less than three years and not more than five years in state prison.Welch sentenced Chiumento in accordance with an agreement reached by Assistant District Attorney John B. Brennan and defense lawyer Timothy S. Perkins.On the afternoon of June 9, 2005 at about 2:35 p.m., a man, later identified as Chiumento, walked in the Bank of America branch office at 1 Post Office Square in Lynnfield, handed a note to the teller and demanded money.The frightened female clerk turned over $456 in cash and he fled from the bank.Three weeks later, on June 29, he walked into the Citizen’s Bank branch office at 37 Enon St., in Beverly and again handed a note to the teller demanding cash and left with about $2,000.A photo array was presented to witnesses who later identified him as the robber.In addition, witnesses were able to provided police with a description of the getaway vehicle.Chiumento was arrested the next month after an investigation.In asking the judge to adopt the proposed sentence, Perkins told Welch that at the time of these crimes Chiumento was having a “heroin problem.”As part the negotiations, the sentence imposed will run together with a prison term Chiumento currently is serving out of Middlesex County on unrelated crimes.Chiumento was indicted by an Essex County grand jury in April 2006 and had been free on bail, but defaulted on the case. He was picked up earlier this year after being arrested in Worcester for two more holdups.