Oakland Man Pleads Guilty to Pharmacy Robbery Charge

Bangor, Maine:  United States Attorney Halsey B. Frank announced that Michael E. Algiere, 32, of Oakland, Maine, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to interfering with commerce by robbery.  Algiere was indicted in August 2018.

Court records reveal that on October 31, 2007, the defendant entered the Oakland Pharmacy in Oakland, Maine.  He was wearing a black ski mask, a hooded sweatshirt, and camouflage gloves.  He went to the pharmacy counter holding a knife and he demanded oxycodone from the pharmacist.  The defendant absconded with several bottles of Roxicodone, Oxycontin, and Percocet.  Investigators submitted several items of evidence to the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory (MSPCL) recovered at and around the scene of the robbery.  Forensic analysts recovered the same male DNA profile from the ski mask and knife.  That profile was loaded into the Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”) in 2007 but did not yield a match.  CODIS is a criminal justice database that contains DNA profiles of convicted offenders and arrestees (known profiles).  Because participating forensic laboratories regularly add DNA profiles to CODIS, the MSPCL routinely compares unknown profiles from unsolved cases against the known profiles in CODIS.  In February 2017, a CODIS comparison revealed that the DNA obtained from the ski mask and knife matched DNA collected from Michael E. Algiere.  The DNA match was confirmed after federal investigators obtained a search warrant and collected samples of the defendant’s DNA.

The defendant faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  He will be sentenced after the completion of a presentence investigation report by the U.S. Probation Office.

The case was investigated by the Oakland Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the MSPCL.