Court Roundup: Woman Convicted of Felony Retail Fraud; Bank Robbery Suspect in Custody

A Pontiac woman pleaded guilty to retail fraud stemming from an incident that left a Bloomfield Township shopper injured, court records show.

Brenda Benton, 48, pleaded guilty as charged during a pretrial hearing Tuesday in Oakland County Circuit Court. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 6.

She was charged last month after store security at Kmart tried to confront her in the parking lot for taking a television without paying on July 3. Bloomfield Township police reports said she got into a waiting vehicle that sped away with the passenger side door still open. The door struck a pedestrian that was knocked to the ground and suffered a broken wrist.

Police located the vehicle and arrested Benton in Pontiac a short time after the incident. Benton remains in custody at the Oakland County Jail on $50,000 bond. Prosecutors requested a sentence enhancement upon conviction on this charge due to Benton’s criminal history, said Mark Chadwick, her attorney.

Prison records show five convictions for property crimes dating back to 1991, and in 2002, Benton pleaded guilty to escaping from prison.

Benton served eight of a 20-year maximum sentence before her release in December 2010. She has not had any other criminal cases generated since her release, but prison records also show she is known to go by at least 18 aliases.

Bank robber identified and already in custody

A Livonia man is in the Oakland County Jail awaiting charges for robbing a West Bloomfield bank branch last month, police said.

Prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Douglas John Fret, 41, last week in connection with the July 20 heist of the  on Haggerty Road, according to a news release from West Bloomfield police.

West Bloomfield Police Lt. Mike Turner said the robber was unarmed but passed a note to a teller that read, "I have a gun and I'm not afraid to use it." Police said that $700 was taken in the robbery. 

Authorities circulated surveillance camera images of the robber across the region to help try and identify him.

However, Fret was already in the custody of Dearborn police for an unrelated armed robbery charge when authorities contacted detectives investigating the bank robbery. He was transferred to the Oakland County Jail and remains there on $100,000 bond pending formal arraignment on the bank robbery charges in 48th District Court in Bloomfield Township.

This is not Fret’s first brush with authorities. Prison records show Fret has a criminal history dating back to 2002, when he was convicted of breaking and entering in Wayne County. He was discharged in 2004 and arrested again for home invasion in 2005, records show. He was convicted of first-degree home invasion and sentenced to three to 40 years in prison and was released in January.

West Bloomfield Patch Editor Tim Rath contributed to this report.