20 Wildly Brilliant Tales of Smart Criminals

‘They called in a bomb threat on the bridge and started robbing stuff on the other side’
20 Wildly Brilliant Tales of Smart Criminals

The perfect crime does exist. Take, for example, the magician at a music festival who did sleight-of-hand on the people searching him for drugs. They didn’t find the drugs, but he probably found a quarter in their ear. That’s masterful work right there, and gives us a reason to learn magic. 

Redditors have revealed the smartest criminals they’ve ever heard of, including those behind the mysterious disappearance of a priceless chandelier that has “limited series” written all over it.

6y ago A couple of my friends from highschool (they were brothers) stocked shelves/worked in the back during the night. Right around when the PS4 was released, they mostly emptied a big bag of dog food and stuck 2 or 3 PlayStations in there, resealed it and waited a few days to buy that bag from the back. + 319 ...
Basslck 6y ago My dad told me a story about a crew of shoplifters who would go into expensive tailors and the like and release a pigeon. While everyone was fussing over trying to capture the pigeon, they would help themselves to a few suits etc. Before the days of security cameras, so seems like it could have happened. 173 ...
sleepgret 6y ago I remember some thieves would go and trigger the alarm of a vacant Blockbuster after they all started closing down. They did this for two weeks straight, so I guess the cops became convinced that this was a false alarm going off at the exact same time every night so they stopped rushing to investigate. One day we find out that the pharmacy next to the Blockbuster was broken into through the wall they shared. Not only that, but there was only one tiny section the wall that wasn't covered in shelves and panels in the pharmacy,
Littlepush 6y ago There's a hoarder on block the whose porch is covered in junk. There's also someone trying to sell their house. For some reason people on Craigslist seem to think that everything on the hoarders porch is free to take even though the hoarder has made numerous calls to the police saying it isn't and denies posting it on Craigslist herself. I wonder who could have the motive to do such a thing. 368 ...
antiquecop 6y ago Stopped a guy at night. Willingly pulled over. Was Mr nice and had an answer for everything. Mistake was he left night vision on the dash. Which have me grounds to search. Had a perfect tool kit for high end breaks... radios to reach others in on the act... thermal suits etc. Barrister turned up to interview... offence of going equipped never stood a chance. Не was released. On his way out joked he hadn't been stopped in 10 years... even complimented me on being pro active and observant. (record showed loads for burglary then nothing since
1011001011 ellingtond e 6y ago . Edited 6y ago Not exactly the same, but I am a Cyber PI, and had a case where an escort was working 3 sugar daddies. She convinced each one of them to buy her a boob job. She collected $4500 from each of them and pocketed the difference. She got a set of boobs and $9,000. Each guy thought they were the only ones until I uncovered the enterprise. (One of the daddies was a married CEO.) When I figured it out, I totally did the Ron Burgandy golf clap... I'm not even mad...
that_other_guy_ 6y ago 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 isnt really illegal 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 stole a bunch of barcodes, put them
somejap 6y ago There's a golf course/country club in my town that has a PGA tournament scheduled in the next couple years. They have a guy repeatedly breaking in overnight and just lounging around and eating food, all on camera. The club refuses to report it so they don't hurt their chances of the tournament coming. + 1.3K ...
Matagorda 6y ago A guy buys and finances a car....doesn't make a single payment, and after 90 days the repo men come looking but cant find it. Behold over 1.5 years later, a auto repair and customization shop files a mechanics lien on the vehicle for over 15,000 dollars of custom rims, tires, upholstery, engine work, and a completely awesome (awful) paint job. So the auto finance company is not gonna shell out 15K to get this now non desirable car. So they sign the title over to the mechanic, who just happens to gift the car to the original
6y ago I remember getting into a festival and seeing a magician guy do tricks on the people searching him to distract them from the drugs he had on him. Spectacular show, and I'm sure he made good profit. If the police officers knew, they'd be talking about it on here. But I doubt it. 3.7K ...
ChungusKahn 6y ago Edited 6y ago Some fella broke into a jewelry store a couple of decades ago. You'd think he'd go for the vault but instead he stole the chandelier overlooking the show room. Turns out the thing is priceless. Funny thing is we found the owner's daughter half naked in the store in the morning. She claimed she had night walks and we immediately suspected foul play. Unfortunately, the security camera footage for that night had been removed so we couldn't verify her story. We let her go and tracked her as we thought she could lead us
JWW13 6y ago e Edited 6y ago There was a guy with over 50 speeding charges, with the name Prawo Jazdy. Не was in a different car, with a different disguise every single time. Eventually, after the government set up a special task force to take down this guy, they realized that Prawo Jazdy means drivers license in Polish.
zerbey 6y ago Homeless guy in my home town figured out if he committed some act of petty theft he'd get a night in jail, a warm place to sleep and a hot meal. He'd show up, turn in his stolen goods and that would be that. After a while the police would just tell him to take back whatever he stole the next day. Quite the town character. + 18K ...
RoseyOneOne 6y ago Edited 6y ago There's a small tourist town where I grew up that is divided in half by a big river, the only way between the two sides is over a long bridge, unless you go all the way around another mountain pass. These guys called in, like, 2-3 bomb threats to a posh hotel on one side of the bridge. I think they even left some dummy packages. All the police went across the bridge to do crowd control, etc, etc. The guys then called in a bomb threat on the bridge. And started robbing stuff
nivenfan 6y ago Edited 6y ago I heard about one person that pulled a shoplifting scam on a large, popular and well known U.S. retail store. They walked in with some cheap nylon product to get one of those I walked in with this stickers they used to put on returning merchandise. The sticker easily peeled off the product undamaged. They walked to the electronics department, grabbed an expensive box off the shelf and went to Customer Service. They placed the sticker on the big box and asked if they could return the item without a receipt. Unfortunately, no. Not
circleinsidecircle 3y ago Many many years ago, probably 20-ish, my Dad used to own this company and one of his employees died in a car accident. In the next few days my Dad received the work logs and books and things that this guy would have kept with him, and that's when my Dad realized this guy was doing offline transactions (What they had to do when a client needed something after hours) I'm not exactly sure how it worked, it was something to do with the physical receipt layout but he would overcharge X amount for the item, get
taylorink8 6y ago A guy I went to highschool had been stealing from Walmart in a pretty clever way. Не would grab video games, mp3 players, beer etc. and throw them away in a trashcan in the garden section. The workers never checked the trash contents and he would just wait, sometimes 5 hours until they emptied the trash in the back dumpster and hop in to get his items. Once he took a cardboard box from a display inside, filled it with video games, a PS3, and extra controllers. Не grabbed some tape and pens and drew all over
mrpbeaar 3y ago Guy found out that when a gas station lost it's satellite connection, it automatically accepted all credit cards, and would presumably process them later. So, he climbed on the roof and covered the dish with foil to force it to lose connection then made charges on a card that was cancelled. + 8.2K ...
spaghettbaguett 6y ago Well... there was this one guy, we'l call him jack. Now, jack stole stuff but also involved alot of people. 1 time, he was planning to steal a whole bunch of cars, all luxury cars. so what he did, was he got his people to call 911, etc, from all different places, and countries, to tell them that car theft was taking place in multiple places. oh: he also only used a few people each time, so it was different voices, people, locations, etc. so the police went each time, until he actually did the crime, then
ymele137 6y ago We had a guy come in our shoe store when it was super busy, and he asked to see a pair of shoes like any other customer. They were decently expensive shoes, probably $100+ and this was maybe 12 years ago. We were busy enough to be juggling between customers and we're running back and forth all over the place and understaffed for that kind of rush on a weeknight. Guy sees we aren't paying attention so he puts the shoes on and walks up and down a couple times as if he's testing them out. Once

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