BANGKOK, Thailand (Feb. 14) – An American woman dubbed the ponytail
bandit, suspected in a string of bank robberies in the United
States, has been arrested in Thailand, police said Thursday. Her
husband remained on the run in the Southeast Asian nation, they
said.

Immigration police arrested Morgan Michelle Hoke, the
21-year-old suspect, at a Bangkok hotel following an FBI tip-off,
police Maj. Gen. Prawut Thavornsiri said.

She was expected to be handed over to American authorities later
Thursday and then extradited to the United States, Prawut and U.S.
Embassy officials said.

Hoke’s husband, 26-year-old Stuart Michael Romine, remained on
the run in Thailand, authorities said.

ABC News reported that Hoke and Romine allegedly robbed banks
together in Texas starting in November 2006, and possibly in
California and Washington. Hoke earned her nickname after a bank
surveillance video from a Texas robbery purportedly showed her
wearing a University of Texas baseball cap with her ponytail
hanging down her back.

It is unclear what role Romine may have played, though some
media reports described him as the alleged orchestrator of the
heists.

After the first of three robberies in Texas, the couple dashed
off to Las Vegas where they were married, according to the
American-Statesman newspaper in Austin, Texas, where at least one
of the robberies occurred.

“It’s been a heck of a case and a heck of a chase,” Sgt. Art
Arevalo of the Austin Police Department told the newspaper.