Female bank robbers hid tracking device in their car

When novice criminals Brittney Sykes and Emma Westhusing found a tracking device in the loot from a bank robbery they switched on their computer. The decision to investigate and hide the device in their car, led them to keep the proceeds from their robbery of a credit union in Oregon - $1370 - for a paltry 20 minutes.

The tracking device was placed among the 48 bills a female bank teller handed over. The duo found the suspicious device when they returned to Sykes’ Portland house to count the loot.



Sykes told investigators that she “went to a computer and searched the Internet to figure out what the device might be.” Panicking and assuming that the pair would be busted, Sykes “ran out to her car and hid the device" underneath the driver's side floor mat in her purple Hyundai Accent.

For her part, Westhusing said that when the tracking device was discovered, Sykes thought it was a dye bomb, “so she threw it against the wall.” Her cohort, she added, “then stomped on it, and then looked up what it was on the Internet.” While the pair was busy Googling, Oregon police were following the GPS signal to Sykes’s Portland residence. The women were arrested on a federal bank robbery charge.