Unless you’re a mattress tester, you should never fall asleep on the job. That’s particularly true if the job in question involves breaking the law.
There are a surprisingly high number of criminals are found sleeping in houses they broke into. Actor Robert Downey Jr. made his longtime drug addiction even more embarrassingly public on July 16, 1996, by accidentally falling asleep in his Malibu neighbor’s house — in a child’s bed, no less, and there are a few lesser known examples:
• Mark Smith snuck past a homeowner while she was ironing, and was discovered hours later when she saw his legs sticking out from under her bed. When the cops arrived, they found the criminal passed out and were unable rouse him from his drug-induced slumber.
• Dion Davis grabbed a bag of jewelry from his victim’s house before passing out right on the bed with his stolen goodies beside him. He didn’t even wake up even when the maid discovered him or when the police arrived and started taking pictures. (Source 1 |Source 2 | Source 3 | Photo)
Forgetting to flush the toilet after you go number two isn’t just bad etiquette, it’s also a great way to leave a DNA sample behind.
Charles Williams should have learned better manners because leaving the toilet unflushed in a home where he stole $1,000 worth of property was precisely what got him caught. The sample was almost lost when the family returned to the home and the children made the discovery – they flushed the toilet before police arrived. However, Williams also left used toilet paper (where, we don’t know) and police were able to use that to get a DNA sample. (Source | Photo)
If you ever break into someone’s home (probably not a good idea to begin with) and help yourself to something to drink, you might want to take the container with you, or at least throw it away. Just don’t leave it behind, lest the police are able to track you through your DNA. Take it from 33-year-old Ryan Bohnert.
Bohnert did just that when he and another suspect broke into into a home in southeast Oregon and took over $10,000 worth of jewelry, silver bars, collectable coins and electronics.
While investigating the crime scene, police discovered an empty orange juice carton on the premises and matched DNA left on the container with known suspects in the FBI database. While one of the suspects was still being investigated, Bohnert was already in custody, facing charges for another break in.
Needless to say, additional charges were filed against Bohnert and the DNA evidence will be added to the case against him. (Source | Photo)
Takeout is a staple of the lazy person’s diet, but you can’t apply that same concept to robbing a bank. Albert Bailey didn’t want to sit and wait for bank tellers to bag up the money during his robbery, so he called the branch ahead, saying “I want $100,000 in large bills and no dye packs. I will be sending someone into the bank to get the money. Don’t call the police, we are monitoring the police scanner. Do you understand?”
Unsurprisingly, the bank employees immediately called 911, but before they could lock the doors, Bailey’s 16 year-old delivery boy arrived to pick up the cash.
He grabbed about $900 and walked to a condominium parking lot, where Bailey was waiting in a car. Police arrived just in time to arrest the pair before they started to drive away. (Source 1 | Source 2)
Many of us neglect to log out of our social media profiles when we’re at home and it’s easy enough to forget to log out even when you’re at a friend’s house. But when you’re in a stranger’s home, you probably shouldn’t be checking Facebook in the first place.
If you intend to lead a life of crime and can’t break your social media habit long enough to commit said crime, at least remember to log out and turn off the computer so your profile isn’t easily accessible to the victim and the police.
Thief Nick Wigg did just this, and was caught when the victim, James Wood, recognized him from his Facebook profile. Wigg was even wearing clothes he stole from Wood in his profile picture! Believe it or not, at least three other crimes have been solved this way, so maybe criminals should consider not using Facebook if they’re too forgetful to log off while committing a crime. (Source)
Making a disguise to hide your identity during a crime is pretty easy. You can put pantyhose on your head, cut a few holes in a pillowcase or even just wear a ski mask. Even if you don’t have anything handy, you can find something to make a mask from at just about any convenience store. With so many inventive ways to hide your face, you have to be pretty lazy to simply grab a magic marker, draw all over your face and say “good enough.” Also, like Matthew Allan McNelly and Joey Lee Miller, you have to be really stupid.
The pair broke into a stranger’s apartment with these “masks,” and were pulled over after police were alerted. When officers spotted the criminals and their marker-covered faces, they not only knew they had the right men -they also had a good laugh. “I’ve been chief here almost 25 years, been with the department 28½ years and I’ve seen a lot of things that make me laugh and weird things, but this was probably the best combination of the two – strangely weird and hilariously funny all at the same time,” said police chief Jeff Cayler. (Source)
Counterfeiting money is hard and no one wants to have to carry around dozens of bills, so to save some effort, Michael Fuller decided to just counterfeit one really big bill – a one million dollar bill to be exact.
Not surprisingly, when he tried to use it to buy $476 worth of goods at Walmart, the cashiers called the police while Fuller sat around waiting for his change. He was charged with attempting to obtain property by false pretense and uttering a forged instrument. (Source | Photo)
Granted, not every robber can get a hold of a gun, but most banks are still more than willing to hand over their money even if you pass them a threatening note. That’s why it’s beyond preposterous to simply grab a plunger and use it to rob a bank like Lawrence Deptola did. Of course, tellers are trained to always give up their cash in order to minimize their risk during a robbery, but Deptola’s idea to just grab the first thing he could find led to the cops being called pretty much immediately, resulting in his arrest only a few minutes later. (Source | Photo)
In this particular case, the only thing criminal was the man’s laziness. Using scissors and climbing a tree to cut down a little mistletoe isn’t a crime, though trying to shoot it down with a shotgun outside of your local mall is another matter entirely.
“I decided to go around the house to the mall. There is a tree around there with a lot of mistletoe. It’s not at the mall it is actually on the fence line. I went over there with the shotgun, took one shot, shot the mistletoe down and put the gun back in the car and gathered it up,” said Robinson. His efforts may have earned him a kiss back home, but the police rewarded him with an arrest and two misdemeanor charges for reckless conduct and firing a weapon on property of others. (Source | Photo)
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