Man gets 12.5 years for 2021 robbery

A Best Buy salesclerk gave up working in retail after a man displayed a pistol during a Sept. 20, 2021, robbery.

Benjamin Julia Ayuso Calderon, 47, was sentenced to an aggregate of 60-150 months in prison Tuesday for an armed robbery of the Carson Valley Plaza electronics store.

Calderon walked into the store on a Monday afternoon and grabbed two laptops. On his way out he showed two clerks in charge of checking receipts a pistol in order to dissuade them from following him.

Prosecutor Chelsea Mazza sought an extra week to contact the clerks who were affected in the robbery, one of whom became very emotional during a conversation.

“He had quite a bit of emotional difficulty since this,” she said. “He stopped working retail because of the impact. They were just trying to do their job. This wasn’t what they signed up for.”

Mazza said he was being investigated in Sparks after robbing several Best Buys.

“He robbed as many places as he could in Washoe County before he came here,” she said.

Calderon was sentenced to 36-90 months for robbery from Washoe County in June 2022.

“I know I did wrong,” Calderon said. “I was never going to hurt anybody.”

District Judge Tod Young ordered that Calderon serve a 36-90-month sentence for robbery with a consecutive 2-5-year sentence for using a firearm. Those sentences are to be consecutive to the Reno sentence.

Calderon was given credit for 258 days time served between his arrest and sentencing in Washoe County.

He was one of three men in a vehicle stopped by the Nevada State Police in south Reno shortly after the theft. Mazza said that both laptops and the firearm were recovered.