LOL Dumb Criminals

Jewellery, gadgets, cigarettes – and suitcases – all attracted the attention of our latest round of the

While on a working holiday in the US back in 2009, two lads from Byron Bay in northern NSW, decided to rob a bank in Vail, Colorado, with BB guns – while still wearing the name tags from the job the pair worked at. They were regulars at the bank and probably the only ones with broad Australian accents. After making off with $US132,000, suspicions arose when they attempted to buy one-way airfares to Mexico with the stolen cash. They were caught and spent time in jail. Their actions made world headlines, but didn’t seem to deter subsequent dumb criminals.

Vanity Did Him In

THINKING NO ONE was looking, a 26-year-old bearded thief took a pair of headphones off the shelf in an electronics store, went into a dressing room – out of sight, or so he thought

– and put them into his pocket. So far so good: if only he hadn’t given into vanity! As he was leaving the dressing room, he looked in the mirror and, unbelievably, became concerned with how dishevelled his beard was. Grabbing an electric shaver off a nearby shelf, he quickly trimmed his beard. Sadly for the thief, the shop assistants in the Vantaa, Finland, store had noticed his strange behaviour, and he was pulled aside when he tried to go through the checkout. The headphones were discovered in his pocket. The man was then charged with shoplifting and property crime.

Very Sneaky

SUITCASES belonging to passengers on buses going to Beauvais Airport outside of Paris were being pilfered. Police were baffled. When and how could a thief get into the luggage compartment of the bus, steal from suitcases, and then get out again, without being seen?

Then, an observant driver noticed a passenger with a backpack and an enormous suitcase, with something inside that was moving! He alerted the authorities. Police stopped the man as he arrived at the airport and found his rucksack contained laptops, money and valuables. His suitcase contained a “curled up individual”.

The scam became clear. Once in the luggage compartment, the thief hiding in the suitcase would sneak out, steal whatever he could find, load up the backpack, and get back into the suitcase before arriving at the airport. The thief and his accomplice were respectively sentenced to eight and 12 months in jail.

Smoke and Mirrors

LOOKING TO SWIPE some cigarettes, three crooks smashed their way through the glass doors of a rural

supermarket in Giessenburg, Holland. Heading straight for the cashier’s counter, one of the men jumped over it to steal cigarettes from the shelves behind. Unfortunately for them, they had tripped the store’s security system, and they got more “smoke” than they had bargained on: the store’s security smoke machine had been activated. Knowing that police had been alerted, they fled, empty-handed.

Clear Directions

AFTER RAIDING a jewellery store of bracelets and rings, the thieves could have made good their getaway had they not made a series of silly mistakes. First, when police in Leicester,

England, found the getaway car, they discovered the crooks’ GPS system showing police where the thieves were headed. Even dumber, however, one of the men had left their address in the car. The three young thieves were jailed for a total of 21 years.

Go Directly to Jail

IT WAS LATE ONE AUTUMN evening when police on patrol in Flensburg, Germany, saw a young man acting oddly. The officers approached the man and, checking his name with police files, found that he was wanted on three separate arrest warrants. Rather than hang around and await his fate, the 24-year-old ran away as fast as he could, jumped into a nearby car, and told the driver to “put his foot down”. The young man had climbed into an unmarked police vehicle – and not too much later, found himself in jail.

Better Than Free

LAST YEAR, an undetermined number of misguided thieves broke into a shop after hours in Zeist, Holland, and ran off with a television set. Clearly, they did not know that they had entered a “give-away store” – part of a recycling project – where everything is free. On top of that, the television they had stolen was broken! They have been caught.

Unlucky Friday

IT WAS FRIDAY THE 13TH when two masked men decided to rob a jewellery store outside the Swedish capital of Stockholm. But it wasn’t their day. Clearly amateurs, the men filled a big bag with stolen goods, but when they returned to their scooter – their getaway vehicle – not only did it not start right away, the big bag of loot was too unwieldy to carry. The two were arrested just metres from the store.

Foiled By Greed

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED if you could lift a bag containing 20,000 cigarettes – give or take a few? Well… after loading up with around 1000 packets of cigarettes, three crooks were unable to get their booty up and over or around the tobacco counter, out of the shop, and away: it was just too heavy. So, not surprisingly, when police arrived at the supermarket in the Midlands of England, the men fled empty-handed. The men were sentenced to a total of 14 years in jail.