PHOENIX—Cynthia Mary Roberson is an unemployed mother who police say led her 12- and 14-year-old sons and their friends to commit at least 20 armed robberies and assaults, including the beating of a teenage boy who had nothing more than an orange lollipop.

Her motivation was purely financial—police said she needed money to pay rent and the loan on her gold Chevrolet.

In every case, the mother drove the getaway car and once coached a kid during a robbery because he was having trouble stealing a cell phone from a victim, police said.

The case has outraged authorities and the public and drawn comparisons to “Ma Barker,” the infamous mother who led her four young sons on a robbery spree in the early 1900s.

“In the days of the Depression, Ma Barker took her sons and they robbed banks and did this and did that for a living until they got caught,” Phoenix police Detective James Holmes said. “Now I’ve got this lady with her kids and her crew of other bad guys and they’re pretty much robbing people all because she didn’t have a job.”