Stupidest Criminal...

[matt81]

Nothing is funnier than a stupid criminal, right?

There was a case where a burglar fell asleep on the bed, in the house,
with the couple whose house he was robbing. It sounds crazy, but it's a
true story. The folks at The Smoking Gun are having a funny award for
this year's "Stupidest Criminal", so I thought to start a thread here
to see if there were any good stories out there that we can submit to
their editors (long-shot but hey, you never know!!) In case you want to
check it out the show (it's called The Smoking Gun Year End Special),
it's going to air thisThursday night, I believe at 10pm. These guys
can be pretty hilarious so it's worth taping in case you aren't going
to be home.

Matt

[JerseyDevil]

I can't remember some of the details of a lot of them. I remember one where a teenager was going to rob a house - so he attempted to climb down the chimney and ended up getting stuck. He gave the cops some huge lie to try getting out of - I think he said he was being chased or something. it was funny though.

[Aeneas]

There have been several in Readers Digest over the years...
This guy escaped from prison, he's wearing his orange suit still, the cops are after him: solution (he thinks): take off the suit and run away naked.
The cop who caught him said it was "very obvious who their man was".

[Eric Stephenson]

This isn't necessarily about stupid criminals but about tort lawsuite abuse. But it is definitely funny and it is definitely about people stealing from others and being stupid.

The site is called "The True Stella Awards" (http://www.stellawards.com).

Here is how they describe their service:

"Stella Awards is a project of This is True -- a weekly news commentary column featuring bizarre-but-true stories from newspapers all over the world, all with snippy commentary by Colorado humorist (and Society of Professional Journalists professional member) Randy Cassingham."

Here are the top "winner" stories from last year:

#6: The Tribune Co. of Chicago, Ill. The newspaper chain owns several newspapers, as well as the Chicago Cubs baseball team. One of its newspaper carriers was Mark Guthrie, 43, of Connecticut. One of its ball players was Mark Guthrie, 38, of Illinois. The company's payroll department mixed the two up, putting the ballplayer's paycheck into the paper carrier's bank account. The carrier allowed them to take back 90 percent of the improperly paid salary, and said they could have the rest after they gave him a full accounting to ensure he not only got his own pay, but wouldn't have any tax problems for being paid $300,000(!) extra. The Tribune Co., rather than provide that reasonable assurance, instead sued him for the rest of the money.

#5: "High Tech" retailer Sharper Image sells a lot of its "Ionic Breeze" air filters. As part of a comparative review of many air filters, Consumer Reports magazine found the "Ionic" unit was the worst performer. SI complained, saying it didn't do a "fair" test. CU asked what sort of test should be done, but SI never replied -- until it sued CU. A federal judge ruled the suit not only had no merit, but was actually an illegal attempt to squelch public discussion. SI was ordered to pay CU $400,000 to cover its legal defense costs.

#4: Edith Morgan, mother of Kansas City Chiefs football star Derrick Thomas, who died after being thrown from his SUV in a crash while speeding in a snowstorm. Morgan said Thomas's neck was broken because the SUV's roof collapsed a few inches -- not from rolling down the highway because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt -- and sued General Motors. Her lawyer begged jurors to award more than $100 million in damages, perhaps more -- he "did not want to put an upper limit on it." GM pointed out that Thomas's oversize SUV was exempt from federal roof crush standards, yet it met them anyway. The jury sent a message: of that $100 million, it awarded Morgan ...nothing.

#3: Tanisha Torres of Wyndanch, N.Y. The woman sued Radio Shack for misspelling her town as "Crimedanch" on her cell phone bill. She didn't even ask them to change it; she just sued. "I'm not a criminal," she whined. "My son plays on the high school football team." Yeah, that makes sense. The name "Crimedanch" is a common joke; police in the area confirm it's a high-crime area. Still, Torres claimed she suffered "outrage" and "embarrassment" at having to see that spelling on her private phone bill. The suit seeks unspecified damages.

#2: Homecomings Financial, a subsidiary of GMAC Financial Services, which is a division of General Motors. The finance company accepted a change of address notice from identity thieves for the account belonging to Robert and Suzanne Korinke. The thieves ran up a $142,000 debt, and the Korinkes notified Homecomings of the fraud the moment they discovered it. Homecomings sued them two years later, saying the couple's "negligence" is what "caused the injury to Homecomings," not the fact that the company accepted a change of address from fraudsters -- and then gave them all the money they could drain. The victims got the company to drop the suit, which demanded $74,000 plus attorney's fees, after shelling out $5,000 in legal fees -- an outcome the couple's lawyer called "really lucky".

And the winner of the 2004 True Stella Award: Mary Ubaudi of Madison County, Ill. Ubaudi was a passenger in a car that got into a wreck. She put most of the blame on the deepest pocket available: Mazda Motors, who made the car she was riding in. Ubaudi demands "in excess of $150,000" from the automaker, claiming it "failed to provide instructions regarding the safe and proper use of a seatbelt." One hopes Mazda's attorneys make her swear in court that she has never before worn a seatbelt, has never flown on an airliner, and that she's too stupid to figure out how to fasten a seatbelt.


It's an hysterical and yet very disturbing account of the money hungry people out there.