Criminal Fools From Around The World

• Florida:
  
  Wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun, a thief burst into the bank one day. Aiming his gun at the guard, the thief
  yelled, "FREEZE, MOTHER-STICKERS, THIS IS A ****-UP!" For a moment, everyone was silent. Then the snickers started.
  The guard completely lost it and doubled over laughing. It probably saved his life, because he'd been about to draw
  his gun. He couldn't have drawn and fired before the thief got him. The would-be thief ran away and is still at large.
• Tennessee:
  
  A man successfully broke into a bank after hours and stole the bank's video camera. While it was recording. Remotely.
  (That is, the videotape recorder was located elsewhere in the bank, so he didn't get the videotape of himself stealing the camera.)
• Louisiana:
  
  A man walked into a Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash
  drawer, the man pulled out a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man
  took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the
  drawer? Fifteen dollars.
• Arkansas:
  
  Seems this guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he'd just throw a cinder block through a liquor store
  window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The
  cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. Seems the liquor store
  window was made of Plexi-Glass. The whole event was caught on videotape.
• New York:
  
  As a female shopper exited a convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911
  immediately, and the woman was able to give the police a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police had apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the cruiser and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car
  and told, "Stand there for a positive ID." To this instruction the man replied, "Yes Officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse
  from."
• Washington:
  
  When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motorhome parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he had
  bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find an ill man curled up next to a motorhome near spilled sewage. A police spokesperson said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his hose into the motorhome's sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he'd ever had.
• New Jersey:
  
  A Newark woman reporting her car as stolen and mentioned that there was a car phone in it. The policeman taking the
  report called the phone and told the guy that answered that he had read the ad in the newspaper and wanted to buy the
  car. They arranged to meet, and the thief was arrested.
• Michigan:
  
  The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 7:50 a.m.,
  flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
• Kentucky:
  
  Two men tried to pull the front off an ATM by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck.
  Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared, they left
  the scene and drove home - with the chain still attached to the machine - with their bumper still attached to the
  chain - with their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper.
• Oakland:
  
  Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them, shouting out to give himself up.
• Illinois:
  
  An Illinois man, pretending to have a gun, kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines.
  The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank account.
• Kansas:
  
  A man walked into a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Shop and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him
• New York:
  
  A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but lay back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to
  pretend he was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward and crushed him to death.
• Wisconsin:
  
  A Marshfield, Wisconsin, man will spend 20 days in jail...for urinating on an ATM machine. Police say James Turley became
  frustrated last April when the machine wouldn't give him any money. A security camera caught Hurley in the act. This week, a judge placed him on probation for three years, and ordered him not to carry an ATM card.
• Virginia:
  
  Robert Lee Brock, who is serving 23 years at the Indian Creek Correctional Center in Chesapeake for breaking and entering and
  grand larceny, admitted it was his own fault that he got drunk and committed a series of crimes, so he sued himself for $5 million for
  violating his own religious beliefs against drinking. Since he can't work and is a ward of the state, he said the state should pay the $5
  million.
  
  Conceding Brock had "presented an innovative approach to civil rights litigation," Judge Rebecca Beach Smith nonetheless dismissed his claim as "ludicrous."
• San Francisco:
  
  A man, wanting to rob a downtown Bank of America, walked into a local branch and wrote, "this iz a stikkup. Put all your muny in this bag."
  
  While standing in line, waiting to give his note to the teller, he began to worry that someone had seen him write the note and that they might call the police before he even reached the teller window. So he left the Bank of America and crossed the street to Wells Fargo.
  
  After waiting a few minutes in line, he handed his note to the Wells Fargo teller. She read it, noticing all of his spelling errors. She quickly surmised that he wasn't the brightest light in the harbour.
  
  Then she told him that she could not accept his stickup note because it was written on a Bank of America deposit slip and that he would either have to fill out a Wells Fargo deposit slip or go back to Bank of America.
  
  Looking somewhat defeated, the man said "OK" and left. The Wells Fargo teller then called the police who arrested the
  man a few minutes later, as he was waiting in line back at Bank of America.
• Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
  
  John A. Carlin of Lambertville, N.J was stopped for suspicion of drunken driving. When asked to complete a breathalyzer test by blowing into it, the man refused because he couldn't blow hard enough without wetting himself. ''I kept telling the police I had to go, that I had to go real bad, but they wouldn't listen", said Carlin. And guess what?? The judge ruled that it was a valid physical reason for not complying with the police order.

Cherbourg, France - One of the most bizarre marital cases unfolded when an unhappily wed couple, Alain and Claudine
Dubert checked in to a Cherbourg hospital complaining of intestinal pain Tests revealed that the hapless couple both
had traces of arsenic in their systems. How did it get there?

Upon questioning, both parties confessed to poisoning the other for months. Both have been charged with attempted
murder and will face trial when they are released from the hospital.

True Court Cases (I'm Told)

• In Oak Park, Illinois, a 16-year-old girl was robbed by three gunmen. She identified her assailants and assisted police in
  apprehending them. The robbers then turned around and sued the victim for "conspiring to violate their rights."
  
  A 27-year-old Westland, Michigan man claimed that a rear end auto collision turned him into a homosexual and was awarded $200,000 by a Wayne County Circuit Court.
• An Oregon jury ordered Ford to pay $1.5 million to the estate of a woman who was killed when a runaway horse she hit crashed through the roof of her Ford Pinto. (Ford confessed that the roof was never designed or tested for such possible accidents)
• Judith Haimes, a self-proclaimed psychic, was awarded close to $1 million by a Philadelphia jury on March 1986 after she said that a C.A.T. scan at Temple University Hospital made her lose her psychic abilities.
• Peter Maxwell sued his own corporation for workplace negligence and won $122,500 for injuries. The man and his wife owned 95% of a urethane manufacturing company in Chino, California. One day while Maxwell was operating a mixing device, a protruding bolt snagged his sweater and pulled him into the machinery and severely injuring him. The man hired a lawyer to sue the corporation which he and his wife owned.
  
  Then the corporation hired a defense lawyer. Without going to court, the
  two lawyers a greed that the company had been negligent and should pay
  Maxwell $122,500 for his injuries. The I.R.S. billed Maxwell $64,185 in
  income taxes on the payment, and the corporation $58,800 because the
  I.R.S. denied the deduction of the expense. He appealed led to the U.S.
  Tax Court, where Judge Robert Ruwe ruled that Maxwell could have the
  money tax-free and that his company could deduct the sum as a business
  expense.
• Medical law suits abound. In 1941, 19-year-old Charles Ellis was working for the Virginia State Highway Commission. A falling rock struck him on the leg. Soon after, doctors discovered bone cancer. Although a pathologist was quite certain that t bone cancers of this type were not caused by rocks, the Virginia Supreme Court ordered compensation.
• This probably inspired other similar suitable. For example in 1958, James Bentley won damages for cancer of the jaw because he had earlier cut his lip on a cardboard carton. A testifying pathologist was certain that cuts do not cause cancer, but the jury believed Bentley.
• In Rhode Island, its supreme court upheld Laura Valente's law suit. She claimed that a light, glancing blow to her nipple caused breast cancer
  which was discovered some weeks later.