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I would guess that the majority of people who get busted by authorities aren’t the smartest bulbs in the box. There’s a reason they’re caught, of course, but also perhaps a reason they’re in the situation of breaking the law in the first place.
There are always people who defy the odds, though, right – even people who walk with the “less savory” among us.
Those are the people even authorities can’t help but admit were actually super smart – even if they wish they would use their powers for good.
24. How not to get caught.
“I worked the scenes.
This guy had attached GPS to the bottom of peoples cars who owned houses, he wanted to rob.
He did it to ensure they wouldn’t be showing up while he was ransacking the place.”
23. They never suspected.
In 8th grade, my football coach robbed a bank in a small town in Washington State. He had a great elaborate plan. He posted an ad on Craigslist for job offerings telling people they had to wear very specific clothes, at a specific location at the exact same time an armored vehicle was supposed to arrive at a bank.
So when the armored vehicle arrived he was dressed in the same clothes as everyone else, he robbed the armored car then proceeded to run down to a nearby river, and he got in a tiny inflatable raft and floated down the river.
The day after he robbed the bank he threw a fat pizza party for our football team and then he went to Vegas. He was honestly one of the nicest coaches I ever had, everyone loved him.
He was caught by a homeless man who recognized the car that he drove up to the bank in. He was just recently released from custody I think. I’m pretty sure he made a huge turn around with his life and was writing children’s books while doing time and now travels the country as a public speaker. Honestly he is kind of an amazing human, even though he has a troubled past.
22. He almost got away with it, too.
“I remember an officer telling me about a B&E alarm he and his team responded to. No one was there to report the alarm, it must have been a security monitoring company that called.
When officers showed up, everything seemed normal, most lights were off, and there was an employee still working. Explains he was there working late and must have set off an alarm.
They almost believed him until he said “uhh” before saying the name of the company he worked for. After that it was downhill but with a little more research he would have pretty much gotten away with it.”
21. Nothing to see here.
Had a call to the IT help desk, from a department of the company I was working at. Asking, “When are the new computers going to arrive?”
This caused some consternation, as we didn’t know what they were talking about. But it wasn’t an order that had ‘gone missing’ as much as the entire department’s computers.
Someone had – in broad daylight – rocked up in a transit van, done a masterful piece of blagging and convinced everyone (security included) that this was part of IT’s rolling hardware update program.
So they loaded their “old” computers in the van, and he said he’d be back “soon” with the new ones.
20. A danger to society.
“There’s one guy I recently dealt with who is on parole. I stopped him in my city after he was looking to buy drugs (usually people come from all over to buy drugs and then leave). I issue him a warning and let him go as it’s pretty common and he sang like a bird regarding the people he was trying to buy from.
Anyway, the next day, I got a call from his parole officer who says he was alerted the guy was pulled over and wanted to verify that It was his guy that I stopped. I’m a little confused at first but he goes on to say that the day before, he was scheduled to meet with him but he had an excuse and bailed.
His excuse was that he was in the hospital. Well when he spoke with him the following day, he was able to provide documentation that he had entered the hospital day 1 and had left day 2. Well I had stopped him at 115 in the morning and after looking at the picture, it was 100% him.
Turns out the guy had checked in then out of the hospital on day 1, then in and out again on day 2. He then re arranged half the paperwork to make it look like he was in the hospital overnight which would make my car stop of him appear like I mixed him up with someone else as well as give him a valid excuse to miss their meeting.
Not sure what’s gonna happen to that guy but I thought it was pretty clever.”
19. The school secret.
In school we would stuff tissue up the hole where change comes out of the snack machines.
The change would get stuck here until the end of the day, then pull out the tissue and blam!
You got some change.
18. On a cold winter’s night.
“Worked at a detention facility. After getting off work, I watched an ex inmate (homeless) being released, he walked over to a patrol car, looked me in the eye, and the elbowed the window in. He was walked back to the entrance and re-booked in. It was middle of January. He didn’t want to get too cold.
To the people talking about “Can’t break car windows.” That’s true. Also depends on the car. The patrol car they used was specifically old model. Used more for the perimeter unless other patrol cars were in the shop. Those windows had been replaced so many times. Idk if it’s the same material or what.”
17. The manager just loaded it up.
I locked up a guy a few years ago and he had an unusual entry on his record. “Theft of an ATM”.
I asked him about it and he told me he was with 4 others and they all turned up at a local bank in overalls with a large truck. They asked for the manager and told him “We’re here to repair the ATM. The manager helped them load the ATM on to the truck (full of cash) and they drove away.
He got snapped when his girlfriend got mad and turned him in.
16. It *does* sound made up.
“A friend of my brother moved to Israel where for a period of time it was/is acceptable to drive with an American driver’s license.
He was pulled over for speeding, and when asked for his license, gave the officer his Costco card (Costco is a membership-based retail warehouse in the US and a few other countries. The exchange apparently went something like this: Officer: “Costco? What is Costco?”
Friend: “It’s the state I’m from.”
Officer: “That sounds made up.”
Friend: “There are lots of states you probably haven’t heard of. Have you heard of Arkansas? How about Idaho?”
Officer: “I guess not…”
Friend: “Well I’m from the small state of Costco.”
The officer didn’t have a response and wound up writing the ticket to someone with a Costco driver’s license. Friend framed the ticket and still has it hanging on his wall.”
15. It’s all about teamwork.
Heard this one from a guy who was trying to turn his life around at college after a drug addiction and being in and out of prison.
He and a friend of his would go into supermarkets or electronics stores and one of them would pocket something small then walk out the door to set the alarm off and get security to search him as he kicks up a huge fuss about it.
Whilst the alarm is going off and first guy is being searched and causing a scene, second guy would walk straight out with a trolley loaded with expensive stuff and nobody would bat an eyelid.
14. Plausible deniability.
“One guy would print barcodes, bring them into home depot and stick them on merchandise in the $100 range. When scanned the items came up around the $10 range. Putting random barcodes on things isn’t really wrong and super hard to notice. Guy two would come in an hour later and buy the underpriced stuff.
Complete plausible deniability. They would then sell the stuff on Ebay.
Only reason they got caught is because the guy with the barcode printer/software cut the second guy out of the operation so guy 2 filched a bunch of barcodes, put them on the merchandise and paid for it immediately afterwards. He then proceeded to rat on the first guy and spilled the beans they had been doing this on a weekly basis for over four years.
Because we could only pin the one case on him, the burglary was dropped down to a pretty theft and he walked away with a few days in county and a small fine. Dude probably took home depot for tens of thousands over the years.”
13. It’s a twin thing.
There were these two twin brothers, big, tall, muscular fellows. Their ruse was ingenious. Both brothers would go into Home Depot separately and each begin shopping, filling up his cart with high-value stuff, each filling up his cart with identical items.
The first brother would go to the cashier and legally pay for his purchases. He’d show his receipt at the door and take his purchases out of the store.
The second brother would hang around the entrance, far enough from the exit not to arouse suspicion. The first brother would take his car to the entrance and give the receipt to the second brother. First dude then takes his purchases to load up in their vehicle.
Second brother then takes the cart full of items, plus receipt, back to the returns counter and says he changed his mind and wants his money back. Home Depot would refund the “purchases”. Dude basically just sold Home Depot their own items.
Evidently they pulled this trick off and on for years before someone caught on. Cop said they probably would have kept on getting away with it for years if they hadn’t hit the same store so often.
12. Everyone hates those guys.
“I have a nice story from insurance/debt collectors.
There was this guy who was already in heaps of debt. Like more than a lifetimes worth of debt.
He proceeded to file several reports for identity theft up to the point that he got protected from financial checkups – It was a temporary measure that were given to repeated identity theft victims. At the same time he had reported fake income to the IRS for the last couple of years to between 40 to 60 millions depending on the year.
So when he applied for credit cards and loans, they were unable to check his financial credit (Due to the identity theft protection) but they checked his tax returns which showed he had a massive income.
Got his loans and credit cards – emptied them out and left the country.”
11. What’s two more?
I was once working an off duty security job at a Radio & Records Convention, at the Century Plaza Hotel.
Floors were closed off for private parties. It was 1979. Some guy offered me $20 to allow his girlfriend and him up. I sent him on his way. The cop running the gig said even he’d have taken it.
I’m like a character I once read about in a novel. You could not get me a million dollars to do the wrong thing, but I can often be “bought” with a simple smile.
10. It wasn’t the driver.
“A while back, there was a series of thefts along the bus lines in my country.
People’s things kept missing from one city to the next, and nobody had any idea what happened as things were presumably safe in the bottom of the bus which nobody except the driver had the access to.
What happened?
Apparently there were two guys, one of whom was really small. You get where this is going. The big guy would put the little guy in a suitcase, buy a ticket to somewhere, load him up with the rest of the luggage, and enjoy the ride, while the little guy went out, nabbed people’s electronics, jewelry, cameras and whatnot, then returned to his suitcase until the ride was over.
Not really sure how they caught them, but it was pretty amusing to read about, and i found the whole thing clever enough.”
9. A pretty face.
Way back when I was young and dumb.. I stopped a car traveling 85 miles per hour faster than the posted speed limit. In the car was an absolutely B_E_A_U_T_I_F_U_L woman. She was a cross between Raquel Welch and Linda Carter.
When I explained why I stopped her for 140 MPH in a 55 MPH zone!! She replied in a sultry voice, while simultaneously tugging at the neck of a low cut summer sweater… ”I’d do anything to get out of this ticket… and I mean anything!!”.
I thought about it for a millisecond or two.. and explained I’d be right back.
I wrote her a ticket for 84 in a 55 and asked her to sign the ticket. Her response indicated she ’d expected a different answer. I politely explained to her that attempting to pay off an officer in any way was a big deal!
I may have been young and dumb, but I wasn’t stupid !
8. Causing big trouble.
“There was an incident in Fargo ND where a guy wanted to take electronics equipment. The store had plenty of alarms on it and generally cutting an alarm triggers an alarm so instead he cut ALL the alarms. This was before cellphones were really widespread and alarms were usually just connected to the phone line.
He found an access point to one of the phone companies big trunk lines (correction: 9 access points). Massive thick copper cables with tens of thousands of lines running through them. He cut through the whole thing with a circular saw, knocked out phone service to most of the town and robbed an audio store during the ensuing chaos.
There were no leads until a tip came in from another town where he’d pulled something similar. They hadn’t been able to pin that to him but had strong suspicions and he’d relocated to Fargo. So the officers pay him a visit. He refused to let them in because they didn’t have a warrant so they left to get one without leaving anyone to watch him and he split. When they came back they found the saw coated in copper dust and a lot of the stolen stuff.
He was in the wind for a while but even after he got caught he had another card to play. While being transported between prisons he used a key he’d made to unlock his shackles and climbed out the roof vent of the bus.”
7. A big enough number.
I was a Prison Officer years ago, and the odd prisoner would approach me asking “how much for your keys?”
My reply was “I have 30years to go, I earn £******* amount a year x that by the 30 and come back to me. They never did
6. In the middle of the day.
“20 years ago a guy on Australia’s Gold Coast got away with a bank heist in broad daylight.
He cased the bank for a while and discovered a pattern of the bank manager arriving about 30 minutes before anyone else each morning where he would leave the front doors unlocked so staff could help themselves in without a key or needing to wait for the boss to come and let them in.
One morning the crook dressed himself up for a busy day of office work and waited for the bank manager to arrive. As the manager was unlocking the doors he made his move, entering the building and threatening the manager with a weapon. He got all the details he’d need to access the vault and so forth and then tied the manager up and stuffed him in his office.
When the staff arrived he told them that the manager had called in sick and that regional office had sent him in to do the open shop thing and no one batted an eyelid. This bank had a small walk in vault that normally only held about 30-50k on any given day but old mate had timed his heist for the morning after business banking day when all the local small businesses would make their end of week deposits and reportedly got a score of close to 250k.
Once the vault was open he pulled his weapon out and invited all the staff to enter the vault and locked them in. By this stage the bank was due to be open so when he went to leave there were a number of customers waiting to get inside to do their banking.
He told them all that there had been an issue with the computers and that the tech team had estimated it would take about 30 minutes before the issue would be resolved and that they couldn’t open until then.
Then he got into his car and drove straight to the airport and flew to Hong Kong and then disappeared.
To my knowledge the law never caught him and never managed to find the money – they knew he’d have had to leave most of it in Australia somewhere because you can only take 10k aud in cash in any currency out of the country before customs pulls you into their interview rooms so the assumption was that he had to have an accomplice here who would funnel the money to him slowly over time.”
5. Close but no go.
I stopped a car for an egregious traffic violation (nearly running over a couple pedestrians in the crosswalk while turning) and discovered that the driver was straight out of my fervid teenage fantasies: tall, slim, red hair, green eyes, pale skin, freckles….
When I told her I would be writing the citation for failure to yield, she said she’d be happy to talk with me “later, privately,” about any way to make up for her traffic violation. I have to admit to a few twinges in the nether region when she said that, but she ended up getting the citation…
Otherwise, I’ve never considered accepting a payoff. I’ve had plenty of people offer cash, and even one idiot who said he’d give me $2500 to let him go, but he’d have to write me a check…
4. He got away with it, too.
“Several years ago in Cape Coral FL, a man waited on a sidewalk in front of a Publix grocery store and used a taser on an armored car guard carrying two bags of money.
Amazing balls on that guy.”
3. Not tempted at all.
There was never a situation i was in that i was remotely tempted to take a payoff, i never had the urge to take one nor was in a position to take one
It totally goes against what i believed in and took in my oath of constitution which still applies even in my retirement.
2. Small town, big brains.
“Probably one of the smartest thefts in my small city.
One of the main streets is cut into a hillside and, as a result, there is a very steep and quite tall concrete-covered bank immediately behind the buildings. Between two buildings there is a gap that was filled at the street-end by an ATM.
To access it for filling, the security staff went through the next door building, out a side door and into the gap, which had the ATM at one end and the steep bank at the other. On the Friday before Christmas, when the ATM was to be filled to the brim, one of the dudes abseiled down the bank at night into the gap and waited for the guys to arrive to fill the ATM (they came early in the morning).
As they came through the door into the gap, he held them up, took the money, and took off through the building to an accomplice waiting in a van on the main street. Then the van took off on the main road out of the city and vanished.
After a big search, officers finally found the burnt-out van. Turned out the gang had driven it up a gorge road and had two other accomplices in cars at the top and bottom of the gorge who simultaneously drove really slowly into the gorge and held up the traffic so that no one was there to see them when they turned off down an access road into some bush.
They ended up being caught, because one of the gang was a former employee of the security company.”
1. That’s quite a story.
Well .. I guess now that I’m living quietly and anonymously in the Caribbean and the Feds can’t touch me …
I had stopped a late model Mercedes with Dade County (Miami, Fla) tags for going over the center line. I suspected the driver was intoxicated.
Long story short while inspecting the trunk I found three kilos of coke and a trunk full of cash. A TRUNK FULL.
The driver, Hispanic, offered me the cash in return for his freedom. I agreed and I’ve been living very well ever since.
These are some pretty entertaining tales, I don’t care who you are.
If you’re an officer and have something similar to share, please do so in the comments!
