The World's Dumbest Criminals: Outrageously True Stories of Criminals Committing Stupid Crimes

Preface

What is it about dumb criminals that is so endlessly entertaining? Perhaps it starts with the criminality. Criminals are bad, and everyone is fascinated by bad men and women. Witness the appeal of such badly flawed characters as Cleopatra, Grendel, Jack the Ripper, Jesse James, Catherine the Great, Rasputin and Charles Manson. (Some might be tempted to add Donald Trump to this list, but history will have the final word on him.)

Then there’s the dumbness. It is always amusing to see or hear about other people’s blunders, whether through faulty planning or clumsy execution. That’s why Wile E. Coyote never catches the Road Runner. That’s why Kevin McCallister always foils those burglars.

So dumb criminals make for perfect light reading. When a hero fails, it’s tragedy, but when a criminal fails, it’s comedy, a relief, plus someone getting their just deserts. You don’t need to feel sad or guilty or anything except amused when a bad guy flops, and you can throw in a bit of moral superiority if you need to.

So here you go. Amuse yourself with a selection of flops, fails and fiascos from around the world. Most of the time, the criminals involved deserve to be laughed at, and they always deserve to fail.

They Didn’t Bank on Getting Caught

NICKELED AND DIMED

There was obviously very little brain power put into planning this robbery. Either that or the getaway driver put so much brain power into it that it tired him out. One way or another, police found him asleep outside the bank in question.

Let’s start at the beginning. On a Sunday morning in June 2017, three men decided to rob a bank. The plan, as far as anyone can tell, was to go as follows: two of the men would break into a Wachovia bank in South Beach, Florida, and the third member of the gang would wait behind the wheel of the getaway car.

According to NBC 6, the two got into the bank by smashing the window at 5:45 a.m. on a Sunday. The bank, of course, was closed, and all the cash was locked in the vault. It appears the men did not have the foresight to realize that this would be the case. So after finding out that all the cash was locked away, they decided to improvise, taking all the quarters, dimes and nickels they could carry. Turns out, they couldn’t handle as many as they thought they could. They filled some bags and headed for the car, but the coins weighed them down so much they were easily caught by the police.

Meanwhile, their getaway driver had fallen asleep, drunk, behind the wheel, and even slept through the sirens and the arrival of the cops.

CALLING AHEAD FOR TAKEOUT

Two would-be bank robbers tried phoning in a heist, presumably to increase efficiency and their chances of success, according to Connecticut police. Not surprisingly, their plan backfired.

I’ve heard of drive-up robberies where they rob the bank via drive-up windows, said Detective Lieutenant Michael Gagner of the Fairfield Police Department. But I’ve never had somebody call ahead and say, ‘Get the money, we’re coming.’

The attempted bank job occurred in March 2010 at a branch of the People’s Bank in Fairfield. According to a CNN report, a bank employee received a phone call from one of the suspects demanding that $100,000 in large bills be gathered. The suspect threatened that there would be a blood bath if their demands were not met.

The employee immediately called 911, Gagner reported. The bank also initiated a lockdown; however, one of the robbers was already inside. While his co-conspirator was on the phone with one teller, he had entered the bank and handed another teller a note demanding money. The [employee] is literally giving us a blow-by-blow, saying the robbery is going down, Gagner said.

The suspect in the bank was able to take around $900, but by the time he asked employees to open the door for him to leave, police had arrived at the scene. The suspect ignored the officers’ orders to stop and ran to a nearby car, where his partner was waiting. Police were then able to arrest both suspects without incident.

As reported by the Fairfield Citizen, a search by police of the suspects’ vehicle produced a scanner tuned to the Fairfield police frequency, two walkie-talkies and a robbery to-do list that included times for getting into and out of the bank.

We were all kind of cracking up with the call-ahead aspect of it, Gagner said. Definitely unusual technique.

Gagner added that the robbers had insisted that a dye pack not be put in with the money waiting for them. The bank disregarded this order, and a bag of cash got covered in dye when it was thrown on the ground.

One of the suspects was a twenty-seven-year-old man, Arnold, from Bridgeport, Connecticut. The other was his sixteen-year-old cousin, who was considered a juvenile. The two were charged with first-degree robbery and threatening in the first degree.

In October 2010, Arnold pleaded guilty in Connecticut State Superior Court to conspiracy to commit second-degree robbery, being a persistent dangerous felony offender and harassment.

Arnold was on probation at the time, having served seven years for another bank holdup in July 2003. According to prosecutor Howard Stein, Arnold had walked into a bank and handed the teller a note demanding $50,000 in cash, saying that he had a bomb. Upon leaving the bank, Arnold was immediately arrested. Police found a circuit board and some wires in his pocket, Stein said. Arnold told police he had been kidnapped by a man who said he was putting a bomb in Arnold’s pocket and threatened to detonate it unless he robbed the bank for him. Despite this story, Arnold ended up pleading guilty to that robbery too.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

"Roland" was a widower who had a problem with alcohol and a pile of bills. He also had two kids. So he did what most struggling dads do when they are trying to support their families: he got a handgun and held up a bank.

According to police reports, after that first successful bank robbery, every year or so, Roland would visit a bank and steal a few thousand dollars. It paid the bills.

After robbing five banks, Roland moved from Oregon to Texas, and his twenty-year-old son, Dean, and eighteen-year-old daughter, Bibi, soon followed. Roland wanted to start a gang, so he asked his kids to help out. Dean needed money for college, so he was willing. Bibi also agreed, but mostly just to please her dad.

According to HuffPost, the family robbed their first bank, in Katy, Texas, in August 2012. Roland and Dean wore painter’s masks and overalls, and carried pellet guns. Bibi parked behind the building and waited for them, keeping in touch by phone.

The robbery netted nearly $70,000. A few months later, they pulled a second job, but this time they made a mistake when they tried to case the bank in advance. Wearing orange safety vests, they pretended to be construction workers who wanted to open accounts. After the robbery, detectives viewing the security videos thought the vests were too clean to belong to real construction workers. Oxygen reported that the police tracked the vests to a local hardware store and got Roland’s credit card information. They busted the family in November.

As reported by ABC News, the robbers immediately confessed. Because Bibi was merely the getaway driver, and under duress, she was sentenced to five years. Dean was given a ten-year sentence, and Roland, who also confessed to several robberies in Oregon, got twenty-four years.

Dean and Bibi said they hoped to start new lives once they got out of jail, though their father would be in prison for a long time.

Bibi was arrested again in August 2016 for participating in an armed robbery at a gas station in Laredo, Texas, Oxygen reported. She had been released for good behavior in October 2015 after serving two years and ten months of her sentence. Laredo police said she was sitting inside a vehicle in the parking lot outside the store when they were called to answer an armed-robbery report. Bibi was arrested when officers learned she was on parole for the 2012 robberies.

BUTTED OUT

A bank robber from Ambridge, Pennsylvania, will spend ten years in prison because he really, really needed a smoke.

According to The Times, on October 4, 2013, the police were in pursuit of thirty-eight-year-old Peter after the robbery of the Huntington Bank in Ambridge. Officers stopped and gave a group of construction workers a description of the man they were after. Just moments later, Peter stopped and asked one of the construction workers for a cigarette. The worker provided the cigarette and, not knowing who Peter was, mentioned that the police were searching for someone wearing a cap and a blue shirt. Peter then nervously removed his blue shirt and baseball cap and threw them in a large waste container nearby.

Peter’s smoke break gave police time to find him, and they arrested him shortly thereafter.

In June 2014, Peter pleaded guilty in a Pittsburgh courtroom, facing a sentence of as much as twelve years in prison, according to federal guidelines. Senior U.S. District Judge Gustave Diamond gave him ten years.

At the time of the Huntington Bank robbery, Peter was on probation for robbing another Ambridge bank in March 2008. In that case, the teller had put a dye pack in with the money. Several hours later, police pulled a car over because the driver was wanted on a parole violation, and found Peter in the vehicle, covered in dye.

The thief apparently learned one lesson from that earlier crime: when he entered the Huntington Bank, he told the teller, This is a robbery. No dye packs. No alarms.

RED-LETTER DAY

A Pensacola, Florida, man pleaded guilty in April 2011 to stealing almost $10,000 from a bank. His fatal error was that he returned to the bank to retrieve the note he had handed to a teller.

The would-be thief walked into a Regions Bank in Foley, Alabama, in October 2010 and slipped a note to the teller. I have a gun, the note read. Do not alert anyone. No alarms, no dye packs, give me all the money in your drawer. You have 15 seconds, do not panic or alert anyone.

According to his plea agreement, the thirty-three-year-old robber left the bank with $9,945 but returned to retrieve the holdup note, reported AL.com.

A Baldwin County sheriff’s deputy was able to catch up to the man, who was driving a stolen black Ford Explorer, and chase him until the vehicle overturned. All of the money was recovered, as was the stickup note.

INTERVIEW WITH A BANK ROBBER

A resident of Lawrenceville, Georgia, thought he was being a helpful and engaged citizen when he agreed to do an on-camera interview with a local news station to talk about public transit. However, he might have been able to sell the helpful and engaged citizen role with more conviction had he not just robbed a Chase Bank minutes before. Witnesses saw him leave the bank and walk toward the news truck. Upon agreeing to do the interview, he removed his bank robbery disguise (his hat and do-rag) and revealed his face to the camera—and the world.

The manager of the bank told the police where he believed the suspect had gone. When the officers followed up with the TV station, they learned that the interviewee had given the reporter his real name.

After the interview, the thief proceeded to case a Fidelity Bank in the area, authorities later revealed. It is believed that he tried to rob five banks in all but got money from only two of them.

In a Facebook post, the Lawrenceville Police Department offered some advice to those considering a career in bank robbery. When after having robbed several banks and you are at another bank casing the place for an additional robbery and are approached by a news crew in the parking lot . . . DO NOT stop and agree to an interview with said news crew, the statement read. You see, when you accept an interview and provide them with your real name it actually makes our job too easy.

TATTLE TELLER

A bank robber walked into a Bank of America branch in San Francisco and wrote a note that read, This iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag. But then, worried that someone had seen him write the note and would call the cops, he walked out, crossed the road to a Wells Fargo bank and went up to a teller with the note.

As reported by The Telegraph, the Wells Fargo teller told the robber she couldn’t accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip. He would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America.

Defeated, he said Okay and left. The teller called the cops, who found him in the lineup back at the Bank of America.

This robber’s note-writing style contrasts dramatically with that of the Good Grammar Bandit, who robbed a series of banks in Colorado. According to CBS Denver, in 2015 police finally managed to arrest a man who had penned immaculately written robbery notes that were typed and used proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. He obviously did not want to risk any miscommunication.

Wild Kingdom

THAT’LL TEACH HIM

After a two-day search of Kruger National Park in South Africa for the body of a suspected poacher, officials recovered only two items: a skull and a pair of pants.

In April 2019, the suspected poacher had entered the park with a group of other men to illegally hunt rhinoceros when, according to his accomplices, he was trampled by an elephant. As if this message from Mother Nature wasn’t clear enough, park officials believe the man’s body was then devoured by a pride of lions, TimesLIVE reported.

Entering Kruger National Park illegally and on foot is not wise, it holds many dangers and this incident is evidence of that, said Glenn Phillips, managing executive of the park.

Reports vary on the number of accomplices the suspected poacher entered the park with; depending on which source is correct, either three or four men have been arrested and are awaiting trial.

According to TimesLIVE, Kruger National Park has an ongoing problem with poaching, and there remains a strong demand for rhino horn, which some people believe is an aphrodisiac. The park is home to both black and white species of rhinoceros. The World Wildlife Fund lists both species as vulnerable, and Save the Rhino lists black rhinos as critically endangered, with fewer than 6,000 left in the wild.

The same week the poacher died, Hong Kong airport authorities seized the biggest haul of rhino horns in five years, valued at $2.1 million.

CAN I TAKE A MESSAGE?

Homing pigeons have been used to carry messages for thousands of years, as their powerful homing ability enables them to return to their lofts even if they are hundreds of miles away. Pigeons are mentioned in the Bible and were used to deliver chariot-racing results across the Roman Empire. As Genghis Khan went about conquering the world, he set up pigeon relay stations along the way. The New York Times noted that France, quite aware of the carrier pigeon’s ability, mobilized 30,000 pigeons during the First World War and made a law that those who interfered with the pigeons’