They would only get $555, that seems like a piddling amount to go through all that trouble:

Two men on a motorcycle grabbed a housewife, pulled out a machete and cut off the hair she had been growing for two decades, police in northeastern Brazil said Thursday.
The woman, whose name was not released, told police she was walking to church when she was assaulted late Tuesday, police officer Antonio Williams da Silva said by telephone from the northeastern city of Aracaju.
“She was an evangelical and said she hadn’t cut her hair for 20 years,” da Silva said. “It must have been nearly a meter and half (more than four feet) long.”
The robbers cut the woman’s hair above her shoulders, he said, apparently with the idea of selling it to be fashioned into a wig.
“A hairpiece that size could cost you as much as $555,” da Silva said.

I feel bad for this woman because she probably didn’t cut her hair because of this verse:

1 Corinthians 11:15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.