Jury convicts Lockport man of robbing elderly couple in Tonawanda home invasion
Buffalo News, December 13th 2023
Christopher Rathman sat at his elderly parents’ kitchen table in June 2017, joined by a good friend, as he counted the $170,000 in cash he would hide in the attic of their Town of Tonawanda home.
A jury Tuesday convicted that friend, Todd Laraba, of stealing $60,000 of that stash a few months later.
A pair of robbers tied the elderly couple’s hands and ankles with black zip ties and placed duct tape across their mouths before one of the intruders headed straight to the attic and took a lockbox containing the money, according to federal prosecutors.
“We were really good friends,” Rathman told jurors about Laraba, 45, of Lockport, whom he had known since high school. “I mean, we hung out all the time.”
But under financial pressure and motivated by greed, Laraba wanted easy money, and he knew exactly where to go to find it, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Rudroff told jurors Tuesday.
