COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Less than an hour after two masked and armed women held up an Air Academy FCU branch last Wednesday afternoon, police officers and FBI agents tracked the alleged robbers to a home where they arrested the suspects and recovered more than $2,500 – after an alert teller stuck a GPS device into the cash bag.
According to the police, two women entered the credit the union around 3 p.m. wearing ski masks and holding semi-automatic pistols. The credit union employees were ordered to stand against a wall. One of the robbers demanded money and a credit union employee gave her cash from a drawer. Unnoticed, the employee included a bill with a security device attached.
The GPS tracker works like this: As long as it is in the teller’s drawer it remains inactive. If it is moved outside the reading field of a magnetic plate, the device is activated, triggering an alert to security officers and police that the device is on the move. At that point it’s tracked by GPS, cell towers and radio frequency beacons.
At the home, authorities found two handguns, a backpack and the money believed to have been stolen from the credit union.
