Bible_Belt said:
So far the only arrest has been of a bank employee who was discovered to have an outstanding warrant while the police were investigating the robbery. (D'oh!)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/03/01/1172338795528.html
More arrests have been made.
19-year-old women, bank teller arrested in holdup
Suspects will be charged with theft, not bank robbery
By
YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ,
SAEED AHMED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/02/07
Two women charged with robbing a bank while hiding behind smiles and sunglasses had a court hearing today and remained in jail. Two men police have accused as accomplices were also behind bars.
From left, suspects Ashley Nichole Miller, Heather Lyn Johnston and Benny Herman Allen III.
www.cobbcounty.org
The survelliance-camera image from the bank.
Police arrested the four Thursday night in the so-called "Barbie Bandits" case.
Ashley Nichole Miller, an 18-year-old Atlanta woman, was in the Cobb County Jail with no bond allowed. Heather Lyn Johnston, a 19-year-old Lawrenceville woman, was in the Cobb County Jail with bond set at $26,000.
Police charged both with felony theft and other charges in connection with the heist at a Bank of America branch at a Kroger supermarket on Mars Hill Road in Acworth.
Benny Herman Allen, 22, of Cartersville was held on $25,000 bond. Investigators say he was a teller in the bank branch. They described the heist as an inside job.
Michael Chastang was being held in the Fulton County Jail, where he has an outstanding warrant for failure to appear.
Cobb County police announced the arrest of the two young women Thursday night, along with a new twist: The girls, who were initially thought to be as young as 16, are actually 19 and allegedly were working in cahoots with the bank teller.
Because it was an inside job, authorities say, Miller and Johnston will be charged with theft but not bank robbery. The penalty for bank robbery, said Cobb police Officer Wayne Delk, would have been much steeper.
Tuesday's bizarre heist, at a Bank of America branch inside an Acworth Kroger, generated intense media attention across the globe – Australia, Japan, the Mediterranean nation of Malta.
After police released surveillance camera images of the women in shades, nonchalant as they stood before the teller, one Web site headlined the story: "Kappa Kappa Gimme Your Money: Hottie Bandits Strike Georgia Bank."
"We have gotten tons of calls — from 'That's my niece,' 'That's my granddaughter,' to 'I know this person from such and such,' " Delk said.
Eventually, the publicity yielded the tip police needed.
The women were pulled over in Douglas County on Thursday afternoon, police say. A man in the gray Nissan with them, Chastang, was also arrested, although police did not say how he was connected to the robbery. He had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court in Fulton County.
After hours of questioning the two women, detectives announced the arrest late Thursday night and laid out what they said they had learned:
The women, dressed in tight jeans and designer sunglasses, smiled and giggled as they walked up to a teller at the Mars Hill Road Kroger. They handed him a note, got an undisclosed but "substantial" sum of money and strolled out.
It turns out, police said, they knew the teller, Benny Herman Allen III, 22, of Bartow County.
"All of them conspired to steal the money," Delk said. "The teller, he was in on it."
Allen was arrested the day of the incident, but at the time police did not think he was connected to the heist. He was picked up on an outstanding warrant from Bartow County.
A woman who answered the phone at Allen's Cartersville townhouse Thursday night responded to a reporter: "I'm not trying to talk to anybody from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I'm not sure how you got my phone number." Then she hung up.
Miller had an outstanding warrant out of Clayton County for violating probation. Police did not release any other information on them, no doubt sending college students scrambling to social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace to see if they can find them.
Larry Sparks, unit chief of the violent crimes unit for the FBI, said that since the 1980s about 5 percent of bank robberies were committed by women.
"The only real difference we are seeing now is the role of the female. It used to be they were the lookouts or drove the getaway car. Now we are seeing them going into the bank."
"Very few bank robberies involve teenagers," Sparks said.
People were still buzzing about the case Thursday.
Andrew Rigney, a freshman at Kennesaw State University, said he and his friends were amazed by the case.
"How could it be that easy to steal that much money?" he said.
David Esposito, 19, another KSU freshman, said he couldn't fathom why the women would do it. "Pretty much their lives are ruined," he said.
Staff writers Yolanda Rodriguez, Aixa Pascual, Jennifer Brett and Cicely Wicks contributed to this article