Local Celebrity, International Fugitive
Dubbed the "Ponytail Bandit" by the FBI after video surveillance showed her robbing banks with her tied hair beneath a baseball cap, Morgan Michelle Hoke-once named 'Most Likely to be Famous' by her 7th-grade JIS classmates-led authorities on an international chase from Texas to South Korea before finally being captured in Bangkok, Thailand. Tempo contributor Natasha Schou, an alumni of JIS herself, recounts Morgan's saga, possibly brought about by her dysfunctional state, a condition that increasingly besets expatriate children.
December 9, 2008
MORGAN'S bank robbery spree began on May 7, 2007 at a Wachovia Bank in Austin, Texas. After the first robbery, she went on to rob a Wells Fargo Bank in Roseville, California and a First Heritage Bank in Lynnwood, Washington in the span of that one month.
For months the sole evidence the FBI and local police had to go on was her distinct traits: the obvious ponytail and baseball cap, the slouched shoulders, and crossed arms, according to a FBI stat
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