Police Nab 'Barbie Bank Bandits' Suspects

Two Men Also Arrested, Including A Bank Teller, In Suburban Atlanta





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Two Young Women Rob Bank

Police in Cobb County, Ga., are looking for two young women who robbed a bank in Acworth. As WGCL's Joanna Massee reports, the two don't look like what most would expect. | Share/Embed


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(CBS/AP) Police say they have arrested the so-called "Barbie Bandits," a pair of girls who wore sunglasses and laughed as they robbed a supermarket bank branch, and two other people. One of the alleged accomplices was a bank teller.

The two women are both 19, not about 16 as initially thought.

After a brief car chase, the two women and a man were arrested Thursday by police in Douglas County, about 20 miles from where robbery occurred two days earlier, said sheriff's Maj. M.O. Harper.

"They followed them and I think they stopped them when they pulled into somebody's driveway," Harper said.

Surveillance video shows the robbers giggling and smiling as they hand a teller a note demanding money from the Bank of America branch at a Kroger grocery in Cobb County. Police declined to reveal what the note said or how much money was stolen.

Ashley Miller, Heather Johnston and the teller, Benny Herman Allen III, 22, were charged with felony theft and marijuana possession, said Cobb County Police spokeswoman Cassie Reece. Michael Chastang, 27, who allegedly was in the car with Miller and Johnston, was charged with felony theft and drug trafficking, authorities said.

Police now think the "Barbie Bandits Heist" was an inside job, reports CBS News' Pete Combs (audio).

"It was a conspiracy to take money from the bank," Reece said. "The teller, he was in on it."

That's why the charge is for theft and not bank robbery. The penalty for bank robbery is much steeper, police officer Wayne Delk told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Allen was arrested the day of the incident, on an outstanding warrant from Barlow County, but police did not think he was connected to it. There were also outstanding warrants from neighboring counties for Miller and Chastang.

Cobb County police have not released any other information about the two women or how Chastang is connected to the case.

The store is in a strip mall in an upscale Cobb County neighborhood, 30 miles north of Atlanta. The story has garnered international interest.






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