In an old TV sitcom, a bar called Cheers was a place "where everybody knows your name."

Unfortunately for David Perez, a Lebanon pizza shop he robbed was a place where everybody knew his voice.

The Pennsylvania Judicial Center

After all, court records show, Perez lived across the street from Francisco's Pizza and had been a customer of the 10th Street eatery for years. He also had been parking his car illegally in the restaurant's lot.

So police said when Perez and two other masked armed robbers hit the place in May of 2012, the owner and one of the employees recognized his voice immediately. That identification, and the testimony of one of his colleagues in the crime, led to Perez's conviction and 11- to 25-year state prison sentence.

The state Superior Court upheld that penalty this week in rejecting Perez's appeal for a new trial.

Court filings in the case depict a robbery plot that could have been cooked up by the Three Stooges.

It began to unravel almost immediately when one of the pizza shop's employees, and then the owner, recognized Perez's voice. Police said Perez at one point told his co-conspirators that he was going to have to kill the employee, a threat he didn't carry out.

He did, however, jam the barrel of a pistol in the worker's mouth and march him over to confront the shop owner, who was counting cash, investigators said.

Both victims identified Perez as one of the robbers during his trial, which ended with convictions on multiple counts of robbery, conspiracy and making terroristic threats.

On appeal, Perez, 39, challenged his victims' ability to identify his voice. As Judge Victor P. Stabile noted in the Superior Court's opinion, Perez argued that identification was insufficient because "his voice is not distinctive."

Stabile turned that argument aside, noting the store employee and owner "never wavered in identifying (Perez) by voice."