‘Follow-Home’ Bandit Sentenced to Prison : Crime: Richard Talley was accused of robbing a woman of a $30,000 ring after he and cohorts shadowed her from a supermarket.

A Pasadena man, a member of a ring of “follow-home� bandits that preyed on women in the San Fernando Valley area, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in prison for robbery.

Richard Talley, 22, who pleaded no contest to one count of residential robbery, was one of three men arrested when they stole a $30,000 diamond ring from a Woodland Hills woman they followed home from a supermarket in May.

Talley was arrested along with Bernard Roberts, 24, of Granada Hills, Derrick Mosley, 20, of Pacoima, and a 17-year-old Pacoima youth.

Mosley was sentenced in July to three years in prison. Roberts, who police believe was the ringleader of the group, faces sentencing Jan. 11 for the Woodland Hills incident and several other robberies.

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Michael Harwin sentenced Talley to six years in prison--the maximum for residential robbery--and added an extra year because Talley took property worth more than $25,000, a special allegation allowing the judge to enhance the sentence.

Talley also had faced another robbery charge and one count of attempted robbery in connection with two other incidents in the Valley, but the charges were dropped because of shaky evidence, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Gloria M. Mas.

“The identifications by the witnesses just weren’t good enough,� Mas said.

Police said Talley, Roberts, Mosley and perhaps others were responsible for as many as 24 follow-home robberies from Burbank to Calabasas.

Officers from the Special Investigations Section of the Los Angeles Police Department arrested the three men after they followed Catherine Rothenberg from a Ralphs market and robbed her in the driveway of her home, authorities said. Rothenberg was uninjured and her purse and diamond ring were recovered.

Officers had kept Roberts under surveillance because he had already been arrested on suspicion of committing six other follow-home robberies. Officers had tailed Roberts for three weeks before catching him at the Rothenberg house in May.

Such follow-home robberies have become more common in the Valley in the last three years. Robbers pick a victim--often one wearing expensive jewelry or driving a luxury car--in a public place and follow the victim home, police said.

According to detectives, the ring members carefully planned their robberies, primarily focusing on stores along Ventura Boulevard. The money stolen was used to pay for lawyers, sports cars and trips to Las Vegas, police said.