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 next Thursday 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.

fortytwo

Read a story once about some guys who decided robbing a convenience store was a nifty idea.
The guy responsible for stealing the getaway car is sitting in the passenger seat when the other two come running out.
The one with the gun hops in the drivers side. Turns out he couldn't drive a stick! :Cheeky:

Saw another where a mans pot plants grew higher than his cornstalks. -Oops!

Caught a different one on something like cops one night. A thief decided to get smokes just after grabbing the cash. The clerk told him, can't if you're underage. He actually handed over his ID. :thumbs:

neorask

Here's one. This guy decides to break into someone's summer house about two weeks before they were to arrive. Since they were not there for the winter, the electricity had been turned off. The criminal forgets about the house not having electricity and after collecting the items he wants to take, walks into the garage and locks the steel door behind him. Unfortunately, the garage door did not have a manual release and he could not break down the steel house door. Ten days later, the housekeeper finds the man huddled in the corner of the garage with only a jug of water and some dog food to live on for the past week and a half.

But what really gets me is that this criminal sued the owners of the house and WON, because of the suffering he went through while being locked in the cold garage.

Norseman

I heard a story about two people who called the police saying that their marijuana which they planned to sell had been stolen. That's about as stupid as you get.

MarkW

I'm almost certain this is an urban legend--I recall that this was one of the phony lawsuits in the "Stella Awards" hoax, along with the guy who allegedly set his RV on cruise control and then went to the kitchen to make some coffee, and other pieces of fiction.

I think snopes.com has something on this; I'll try to track it down tomorrow.

Mark

lisarea

I think stupid "viral marketers" are funnier, personally.

You know, like people who register at random discussion boards for the sole purpose of hawking websites and Court TV shows and stuff. There's an article about the phenomenon in general here, on the NYT site. (Registration required.)

And here are a few real life examples from people with the username matt81:

This one, for Smoking Gun
This one, for Spike TV
This one, identical to the one here
This one, again for Smoking Gun

chapka

Moving to Humor.

Pjanc

1) An armed idiot decides to rob a liquor store and after taking all the money from the clerk demands a bottle of whiskey as well. The clerk responds that he can't give him the booze unless he proves he's 18+ (or 21, not sure what the legal age in the US is), so the guy shows him his driver's license...

2) This isn't really a stupid criminal story, but I remembered it so I'm going to share it with you anyway. This family with two dobermans went on a holiday and they couldn't take the dogs with them, so they asked a neighbour to throw two lumps of meat over the fence once a day. In a few days, the dogs got used to getting the meal at about the same time so they were already waiting for him at the fence. But one day, only one dog was there. The neighbour was trying to figure out what happened, but he didn't dare to cross the fence, so he would just wait and see if the other dog would show up. The first dog eventually finished and disappeared and then the second dog showed up and started eating. The neighbour though everything was fine and went home. But the same thing happened the next day and every day on, so after a few days he called the police. They came and entered the house and found the reason why they didn't come together - there was a rather scared robber on top of one of the closets and while one of the dogs was eating, the other one was guarding him

Unfortunately due to stupid laws in Slovenia, the robber sued the owner and won afaik... :angry:

barlam

sorry for calling me old fasioned or whatever, but if someone burgles your house and sues for something like that they shold be fucking shot, that stuff REALLY pisses me off, get a hitman in and get rid of them all

DramaQ

DQ's rule of thumb: If a story automatically pushes your buttons, QUESTION IT. Do a little homework.

I haven't been able to find any references to these tales, but I'd be willing to plunk down two bits that its more urban fokelore. Snopes.com has debunked plenty of these already. (Of course, this IS the humor board and I find the stories as stories to be pretty humorous.)

btw.... suing someone just means taking your case to the public for hearing. Even if it's any idiotic case. We have a process for determining what's "frivolous". It's called trial by a jury of one's peers.

dq