The two women who were arrested in Chicago this weekend after getting caught drugging men at nightclubs in order to rob them collectively stole more than $85,000, prosecutors have said.
CWBChicago reported that the two women, 25-year-old Tiana Trammell and 32-year-old Tjwana Rainey, were responsible for “at least 14 similar drug-induced robberies in Chicago.” One of the two women, prosecutors didn’t specify whom, was responsible for 10 of the 14 robberies.
The two women appeared in separate bond hearings on Tuesday, charged with “operating a continuing financial crimes enterprise and possession of a controlled substance,” CWBChicago reported. The women would drug their victims and then steal their phones, jewelry, and credit cards.
“Assistant State’s Attorney Paul Kiefer said the women ran a ‘fairly simple scheme’ that targeted men in nightlife areas. While each crime’s specifics varied, the women offered each victim alcohol laced with a knock-out drug that rendered the men unconscious almost immediately, according to Kiefer,” the outlet reported. “Some of the victims regained consciousness while lying on the side of roads. Others awakened inside their own homes, while one was found at the Lake Forest oasis off Interstate 94, prosecutors said.”
On Sunday, the women were caught on Chicago Police Department surveillance cameras carrying an unconscious nightclub employee to Trammell’s car. The women then took his valuables. The women, Kiefer said, were already on CPD’s radar and had been under surveillance for several days. They were arrested during this particular incident.
The victim in that case, the VIP host at a River North nightclub, told CWBChicago that the women “roofied me at the club because I was wearing designer clothes and a gold Rolex watch.” The unnamed man, who is 26 years old, told the outlet he doesn’t even “remember walking out of the club.”
He added that when he finally regained consciousness, he was missing clothes and there were police and federal agents everywhere.
“The detectives saved me. Thank God her car broke down so [the women] couldn’t leave,” he told CWBChicago.
The man thought he was in their car unconscious for maybe 30 minutes after the women’s car broke down and they had to figure out what to do with him.
“They didn’t know what to do with me,” the man said. “They couldn’t start the car. So I was just laying in their back seat until the cops came. Then they arrested them and recovered my property.”
The women were arrested on the scene, and police found “many small vials of alcohol opened and filled to the top,” Kiefer said. The liquid is being tested. Police also found a handgun in Trammell’s car and that she has a concealed carry permit.
Trammell is reportedly a mother of one and pregnant. Rainey is reportedly “a licensed phlebotomist and certified nursing assistant who works at Milwaukee hospital,” CWBChicago reported.
Judge Charles Beach, who overheard bail arguments, told the court he was treating the women’s crime “in some way as an act of violence.”
“This alleged enterprise involves the…drugging of individuals,” Beach said. “Putting something into someone’s body and not knowing the result of it — affecting their body without them having a choice in it is an act of violence.”
Rainey is being held in lieu of $45,000 bail. Trammell’s bail was set at $55,000 due to an outstanding warrant in Tennessee plus the fact that she actually lives in Wisconsin, making her a flight risk.