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41 Smooth Criminals Who Could Probably Change The World If They Decided To Do Good Instead
The world has had its fair share of dumb criminals. Forgetting to wear a ski mask or robbing a store when there’s a surveillance camera pointed directly at you are mistakes of an unsophisticated criminal. But some lawbreakers are much more clever than this — they outsmart law enforcement officers and go into the history books for their ruses.
Bored Panda came across a recent online thread where people were sharing stories about criminals who surprised law enforcement and everyone around them with how resourceful and inventive they were. “Police officers/investigators, etc., what are your ‘Holy [hell], this criminal is smart’ moments?” one netizen asked. Yet, neighbors, acquaintances, and not just law enforcement officers came forward with their stories of criminals surprising them with intelligence.
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#1
Worked as trainee at an electrical company southern Sweden many years ago. The company noticed a unusual power loss between to nodes in their power grid, couldn’t figure it out for years. Eventually they got suspicious about a local farmer and could see that the loss of power correlated with him running his watering system. Turns out he’s buried a big coil of copper wire beneath the high voltage power line. By carefully crafting it he was able to induce just enough power to drive his watering system.
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#2
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.
#3
My father ran film developing businesses and photography studios back in the 80s and 90s. That industry didn't age well into the 21st Century😄
He hired a young employee who was a brilliant salesman and the business grew into School pictures and wedding bookings soared as did military events and running the color lab for several local newspapers. This guy could sell anything but was a horrible photographer and couldn't run a lab, so he stayed in sales end of the business...
He offered to have his tax guy to the business taxes as a steep discount, so they changed tax preparers. Immediately after the quarterly employment and business taxes went off, this guy flipped. He refused to sell, yelled at customers, didn't answer the phones, and opened film canisters, spoiling 2 weddings from the previous weekend which had to be restaged and reshot. Any idea how much is costs to restage an entire wedding?? Imagine buying 2 complete weddings and paying to rent all new tuxes, rent the same space and pretend to do the wedding all over to get photographs including buying airfare for family across the country.
We fired the guy and were immediately sued. He paid his accountant on the back end to refile taxes as a partnership, not a sole proprietorship and then took claim to half the assets of the business. He walked out with quarter million in photographic equipment and color lab machines, sold his assets for cash and disappeared.
We found out much later that the same man, his accountant and his attorney pulled the same scam with a car stereo company, a construction company, a muffler shop and a Taco franchise over the next 10 years. Very methodical and long game scam...get in, get your accountant to get the business, file as a partnership without them knowing, get fired and sue... He did that again and again, moving cities but keeping his attorney and accountant paid on the backend.
#4
A few years back my elderly neighbors home robbed. Her husband had just passed away and the obituary was in the paper with showing times and time the burial ceremony was to start. These low life’s looked up her husband’s address in the phone book and knew exactly what time their house would be un occupied. They took absolutely everything of value from this lady on the day she was putting her husband in the ground. And they never caught them.
Nicole Weymann 6 hours ago
That's why my uncle asked a neighbour to housesit while my grandfather was buried. 🤷♀️
#5
Not my story but my dad's and I don't remember all the details.
This happened maybe 3 decades ago. My dad worked bank robberies and other financial fraud cases. Most criminals he caught were not very smart at all the way he tells it but there was a group of guys who got involved in some kind of payroll scheme that managed to successfully and anonymously embezzle a LOT of cash. Like I said I don't remember all the details but it involved skimming a few cents off of each paycheck from tens of thousands of checks at a time on each payday for some big company (companies?). This was only possible because it was before the age when everything was digital as a given, and they got access to the physical pay rolls, modified them, and then paid themselves out the difference somehow so that everything still added up on the books and nobody was likely to notice the 1 or 2 cents missing from their own check.
These guys had codenames inspired by their d&d group like "wizard," "troll," etc.
Well some years after my dad catches these guys he is called in for an interview for another embezzlement case of some kind. They're doing the good-cop-bad-cop routine and my dad was supposed to play bad cop. But the guy looked familiar, and kept glancing at my dad nervously like he thought he was familiar too, so he just stayed quiet until a few minutes later it clicked and he says, "Hey wait a minute I know you -- you're the troll!"
The other agent in the room at that point just sat back while my dad, who was supposed to be bad-cop, just starts shooting the s**t with this guy, buttering him up, reminiscing about what a good case that was and how good a job this guy and his friends did before they were caught. Got the information they needed and closed another case.
#6
My licence plates were swapped with a car of the same make and model that was stolen. They then used their stolen car with my plates on them in a police chase. Nearly got my husband arrested for it until I showed them my car at the train station with the stolen cars plates on them. Cops were surprised they were that clever. Still got caught in the end though.
#7
Usual suspect, gets arrested in a light credit card fraud operation. While searching the house detectives find a handwritten book titled *My Life in Crime*, which provided firsthand accounts of many crimes he had committed over the years. Some known, others unknown . Anyway, with that kind of confession sitting around where a cop might find it, you'd think he was stupid.
Soon after his arrest, before trial, he escaped custody; he jumped into the the Connecticut River on a moonless night, and went under. Nobody saw the fellow swim onto shore and disappear into the night.
It was years later, he had been travelled south. There he got into some gambling stuff. And eventually opened a bank, out of his hotel room, which was not a real bank. Then, when he or his mules would hit the tables, the money changers would call the bank to confirm the players has enough money to cover. Of course they did!
They were stealing casino's money, all over El Carib, the West Indies, and Central America, and then gambling with it. Needless to say the games are easier when the player uses the banks own money to cover losses.
Dude loved a posh life. Mixed with celebs, political circles. Then he got caught for real and did hard time. Used the time in prison as if it were a school. Came out with a degree. Then he got extradited back to New England to face charges on the light credit card fraud enterprise he had left behind.
Smart criminal for sure, maybe a genius?
#8
I was an assistant manager at a little deli/corner store for a few years and one of the employees bragged that he was getting a bag of weed a week from the store for free... Not to me but to other employees.
I couldn't figure out how... the numbers always matched up. He was also really sucessful with one of our couponing programs.... It took me a while to figure out that our POS system would take the coupon without the upc being scanned... In otherwords... the coupons were esentially cash. He was cashing out ~$80 a week in coupons. The kid was pretty smart... I only found out when I was doing rhe inventory and the books the same week... I saw that we sold a ton of icecream... and thought geeze I am gonna have to restock the c**p outta that... then realized that it was fully stocked and put 2 and 2 together.
#9
In the 2000's you could order a new credit card, not activate it, and then when you were on a long haul flight you could upgrade via the card machine to first class once onboard and then pay for the premium service and when the flight landed and got internet connection none of the purchases would be successful and you would already be out of the airport.
I never understood how they couldn't find you afterwards with your passport and credit card details but it was a big fraudulent scam that hit the newspapers multiple times. Maybe because apart from witness testimonies there wasn't a sufficient paper trail to say that you were upgraded or had any of the expensive champagne or duty free.
#10
A very clever criminal was stealing electricity for his nightclub in Liverpool, the power company knew something was happening because as soon as this guy took over their usage was about a quarter of the previous owner.
They finally sent an old guy out to check the meter for problems. He discovered that they'd fitted a pressure switch on the door so that when it was opened the meter turned as normal, but as soon as you closes it the meter would stop turning.
Two years they'd been investigating before he was caught out.
#11
I’ll tell on myself if you guys want a “Wow that person kind of s***s” type of story. When I was younger 16-21, I worked at an Italian restaurant that paid me cash and “kept out a portion for taxes” *barf*
Anyways, I worked there for 5 years and around year 2 when I totaled the amount of money they kept that should have paid, I felt cheated, even though I was supposed to pay taxes, also. I had a vague idea on what taxes were but not a great understanding. I knew enough to know they didn’t pay taxes on their business though, being immigrants they had a grant allowing them to not pay taxes the first two years they were open. I basically was mad they were scamming me even though I was also scamming the government? I was young and just didn’t know it was as big of a deal as it is, and in my mind, I felt like if anyone deserved to keep the money it was me, not them. I was basically “unemployed” for 5 years because I was never on their books.
Anyways. I started getting mad because there was only 3 servers including me and I did a lot around the store. Ordering beer, food, writing the checks for the linens and other supplies, working 10-10 the 5 days I worked, I was severely underpaid. We used hand written tickets and no POS system, so I started completely pocketing certain cash paid tickets. When I rang out the cash people I would put it to the side and pocket it after they left and throw away both receipts, the kitchens copy and mine. Also, when people paid card, I would have to manually enter the total amount paid including tip at the end of the night, and then enter the amount paid for just the meal, so they knew what the tip was. On bigger checks, I would change the total for the food and drink by a few dollars under the actual cost so I got a bigger tip. The owners were so negligent with their business they never knew.
I would like to say that I never once stole from an *innocent person or patron* just the people that were scamming me. Looking back I can’t believe how much authority I had and how much they believed in me to not do the things that they were. I was so brazen and unafraid because I felt indignant towards them. Even on the day I rage quit, I wrote up a to-go ticket for a huge order, like 3 XL pizzas, several of my favorite dishes, and desserts, and when the owner went upstairs for his daily “nap” with a woman that was not his wife, I loaded up my car with cases of wine and all the food I had made for the make believe to-go order. I didn’t have to buy groceries for days. Even though they are scam artists in their own right I do feel pretty bad about what I did and would never do that again.
#12
I just like to tell this story when I can.. My dad used to race cars in the 80's and he got caught by a police car. They turned on their lights and chased him. My dad was using nos before that was super common and he flipped that on and took off and then skidded into a random parking lot, crawled through the bushes and got home, then immediately called the police and filed that his car was stolen.
They already knew my dad, but were like "god damnit.. we'll keep an eye out for it--oh look there it is" "oh thank god you found it!" And he walked over and picked it up and drove home w/ it.. They knew he was lying, but couldn't do s**t about it.
#13
Not a police officer but I saw this story of a black guy wearing a blonde wig with a white person halloween type mask over his face with sun glasses so the cops thought they were looking for a white guy when it was really a black guy😭.
#14
A bank in my hometown was robbed by a group of individuals during a historic snowstorm. we got ~12ft in two days, and early in the storm the bank was still open. Couple people just walked in masked with guns, robbed the place and escaped on foot. Police response time was about 45 mins at best, and by the time they arrived on scene the tracks were gone. Longshot, but pure genius.
#15
Not a cop, but a newspaper reporter covering ongoing scams involving crooked tow truck drivers and body shops.
It’s a scam so lucrative that tow truck drivers are burning rival trucks and gunning each other down to protect their turf.
Body shops pay tow trucks kickbacks to bring collision tows, which they’ll use to bill insurance companies for unneeded or overblown repairs.
Toronto-area uses a “first available” system for accident tows, where the first tow truck on the scene gets the tow, which could be worth hundreds.
So what they’re doing is targeting high-end cars and hiring people to trigger collisions with stolen cars — all with an affiliated tow truck conveniently around the corner.
Even cops are getting into it — I wrote about one Toronto cop currently under suspension who would not only tip off tow trucks about collisions (Toronto encrypts their police radio band) he would sell police radios to tow truck drivers and either report them as lost, or have an underground radio tech on payroll to clone the radio.
He also operated an online service that streamed Toronto police radio transmissions online for paying subscribers, owned several tow trucks that he leased out, and even owned a car rental business.
The scam fell apart after police north of Toronto did a traffic stop on a tow truck and discovered a police radio.
That radio had the same ID number as one currently in service in the same division the cop worked in, and the police radio shop determined the tow truck driver’s radio was genuine, but the one in police circulation was actually an illegal clone.
Elladine DesIsles 9 hours ago
I knew from the first paragraph that I would read Toronto when I scrolled down. This has been huge, and while there have been arrests, it is definitely ongoing. Lots of arson and suspicious fires at auto body shops and related businesses, and some shootings that may be connected as well.
#16
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 to work and input Y amount paid and have the correct receipt, and pocket the difference.
He had been doing this for years and years and my Dad didn’t realize. Not exactly the smartest but he was never caught.
My Dad decided not to say anything to the family or anything like that.
#17
My old boss was a major thief with 2 of his close friends in my small city. They all worked normal jobs at areas where they could talk to people (waiting tables and things like that).
Every year when Christmas or another break like holiday they would case out frat/sorority houses and while everyone is seeing family, they'd clean em out. Would go by storage units and look for things like cigarette butts around them and assume people probably practice playing music and store instruments there. Since clearly they're there often enough to hang around and smoke.
One of em got pinched when he tried to sell an expensive guitar at a music shop and it was the shop owners stolen guitar. Thinking quickly he said how he had bought the guitar from a guy named lets say Steve. Gave the cops all the info since he had been working with Steve at the restaurant waiting tables. Well Steve actually just died about a week before in a car wreck so no charges on anyone.
They had ATV's, motorcycles, every video game console, TV's, instruments, etc. When they were finally busted selling a four wheeler to a sheriffs daughter, the other detective who investigated Steve told em that was a pretty clever idea sending them after a d**d man.
Then they all went to prison for about 4 years.
#18
Totally not a cop but
Guy bought a truck and needed plates but was on the run and couldn’t get things legally.
Drove around until he saw a truck like his and wrote down the plate.
Stole multiple plates with similar numbers and letters. Combined them into one plate using tin snips, gorilla glue, and patience.
Drove around with a clean plate for months before anyone noticed. Couldn’t even tell what he did unless you were inches away from it.
#19
My company does orders over the phone, and offers refunds to customers who aren't happy with the service. Order-taking employee would take an order, process the customers card, and then at the end of their shift "refund" that customer, but put the refund on a debit card of theirs. The money would show up in their account immediately and our end-of-night books would balance, so it took us a while to catch this. We did catch it because we track refunds as a measure of customer satisfaction and refunds were up that quarter so we started looking for the reasons by calling customers and asking about it. "what refund? I didn't get a refund". fired him, pressed charges, he pled guilty to theft did 20 days in the county jail.
Fast forward two years. I'm training a new manager. "heather, here's how this works, you gotta watch out for this". She got it. A few weeks later I get a call from our card processor. "hey, we're seeing refunds to cards that haven't done business with you and its against our terms of service". I get the times and dates of the transactions, grab heather, and say "hey, we got a problem. can you see who was on shift tuesday at 3:30, wednesday at ..." "sure, i'll get back to you tommorow". So I'm on my way home and I get a 2nd call from our processor. "we've got the name on the account that is receiving the funds. Do you know heather?"
So I walked into her office the next day, and closed the door, and said "heather, you got anything you want to tell me? " She confessed, said that she did it once to see if it worked, and then kept doing it because it was easy. she'd stolen about $6k before we caught on, which made it a felony. this was a woman who I was paying $80k/year in the mid-90s, single mom, smart.... I figured it was d***s. I told her to take the rest of the day off and we'd talk about it in the morning.
Called the police, had them arrive a half-hour before she got there, the officers were in the conference room when I escorted heather in. she confessed to them, ended up pleading guilty to felony theft. don't think i have to mention that i fired her that day.
I did ask her why and she really didn't have a good answer. I still don't know to this day.
#20
Not a cop but was a coworker to one. Worked in the cage at a casino where all the money is. One girl, pretty new, kept having variances. Her drawer would be off $1-2k fairly often so they started watching her more closely. We weren't supposed to help friends or family but she would and we're supposed to count out by hand the bills. Well she ran the bills through the jetscan and handed the stack to her sister. Well her drawer was $10k off. Turns out she put a $1 bill on top of a strap of $100's and slid it to her sister. Needless to say she was caught.
She was also stupid enough to brag to other coworkers about how she'd soon have enough money to travel and start a business when the day before she's complaining about being a poor single mom. How obvious could she be??
#21
I used to work for a retail chain. One of the store managers in a different state was found to be ripping to company off. He would process a transaction for a large ticket item, such as a TV, print 2 receipts and give the reprint to the customer. He’d then process a refund for the item via his receipt at a later date. When stocktake came, he was fudging the figures in the reports.
He got caught out by a security guard who became suspicious of the way the manager would act during the refund process.
#22
A cop told me about a scam someone ran by taking cars for test drives and then he’d write down the VIN. Later he’d take out an insurance policy using that VIN and claim the car was stolen to collect insurance. I don’t know for sure how it worked but my bet is the cars were still unsold for months so no one knew about it until months after he received the claim money.
#23
Ok.. Not a police officer here.. Worked in a Corporate hair salon. We had a class on loss prevention at one time and the lady that came to talk about what constitutes as theft with employees. One story she told us was about another salon ( located somewhere else) where the stylists themselves were stealing money right from the company. Out of five stylists, four of them were scamming the company. Instead of running credit card payments thru the corporate credit card system on the POS, they would tell the clients the cc system was down, and they would have to run the card thru another cc system.
Each of the four stylists had Square devices that they each set up like their own business so the charges went straight to their own bank accounts, and then the service would either be canceled or show up as a "no show". They finally got caught when a customer called corporate to complain about her service and was wanting a refund, the transaction was no where to be found. The sad thing was one of the stylists was the salon manager, who ended up going to prison for three years plus having to pay restitution. I'm not sure what the other three got, but I'm sure they all lost their jobs.. Just blows the mind the things people will come up with.....
#24
My best friend growing up is a detective and had a crazy story..
A couple worked at the Walmart home office annex dedicated to the start up of the Walmart self check out for level 1 tech. ( Store employees would work them to fix problems at the machines).
A few months after they got fired they started going to wal Mart and scanning crazy amounts of stuff to self check out, and walk out without paying. With a receipt.
What they did?
They would put scotch tape on one of the scanners so when the associate tried to scan their badge it wouldn't work. The workers had to input their 4 digit I'd into the computer to put up the assistance menu. And from there they would canc the item.
These two knew how the system worked and would simpl watch and see the code. When the associate would leave, they would get back into the menu and cancel the entire order. This would print a (suspended transaction) receipt, which looked the exact same as a normal receipt except it says ***suspended transaction** at the very bottom...
They didn't get caught for over a year.
#25
Not a cop (but I read the police reports), but at a place I worked at the new accountant was doing the following:
The manager was signing blank checks to pay the employees because it was easier so the accountant was making out checks to employees on their vacations/days off and then having her boyfriend go to check cashing places to cash the checks. They stole over $30,000 before she was caught over some very minor thing where she tried to physically cover up the date (with her finger) on something she was showing to someone in the office and someone noticed. They did an audit and it was found out what she was doing.
The manager was quietly forced to leave by the board of directors, but one of them got him another job out of state doing the same thing.
It was all hush hush because they board of directors didnt want people knowing about it.
#26
Not a Policeman... but I used to work with a guy who claimed that he used to work as a low-level mule for the Triads in SF.
On one of his jobs, (back in the early 90s) he was supposed to steal a delivery truck out of a Sears parking garage. The truck had been previously loaded with... stuff... and his task was to grab it before it was inspected and then take the goods into the Triads' own distribution network.
Now, this garage was a huge bay-style building capable of parking multiple delivery trucks. Zero windows. The roof and all the doors were alarmed and had cameras.
So my buddy took an old station-wagon down to the garage in the middle of the night. He put the care in reverse, dropped the hammer and BACKED THROUGH THE WALL. No alarms there.
#27
As a teenager I worked in a fast food restaurant. Some time passed and we got a new manager. Things started to go a bit weird after that. Shifts would start to feel really understaffed and the workload went up.
It got so bad that someone must have complained to head office.
Anyway, it turned out the new manager had fabricated other phantom members of staff who were invisibly on the rota. Whether they were his family members or other bank accounts belonging to him I’m not sure.
So he was effectively fully staffing the restaurant from head offices point of view. Overworking the staff that was there and paying himself three times over.
Anyway. Not long after this he just vanished. Not sure if he was caught or not.
#28
Back when self checkouts first came out, me and a buddy would grab a case of sodas and a case of beer, swap the contents, ditch the beer case full of soda and buy the soda case full of beer. We were underage so not only cheap but accessible.
#29
Obligatory not officer but. I'm a historian, and going through records about an investigation my professor did I began to read about a guy named Juan de la Cueva. He was a spaniard merchant from the late 1500's. He moved to Peru and started doing a whole bunch of shady business. The thing is, if you probably know what people used to say about the early modern ages, specially the Spanish Empire, you probably think that fierce, aggressive and barely legal capitalistic schemes were not a thing yet. Well, that's not really the case.
This guy Juan De la Cueva literally oppened a bank so big and important it had offices all over the Spanish Empire from Chile, to Panama, Mexico, The Andes, and Seville. We went through the records with this professor and the things he did immediately made me think of the Wolf of Wall Street but in the early 1600's. He had colluded himself with a guy that stole silver from the King's silver mines of Potosi in Bolivia and ilegally traded with China and India. He started selling chinese silk in Mexico and Panama despite supposedly navigation to Asia by private companies was illegal and only allowed for the King's fleets. He also transported illegal goods from Spain's enemy nations into the Spanish Americas. Any shady business we could imagine he did. Even causing a massive inflation due to counterfeiting silver currency which was basically copper or lead coated with silver. His empire was so big that every single merchant in the Entirety of the Spanish Empire was in a way or the other connected to his company, from Philippines to the Netherlands.
Eventually, a series of risky business ventures that ended badly eventually caught up with the guy. In 1635 he had to file for bankruptcy after a failed business with a ship that sunk with a lot of his money. The thing is, people caught wind of this even before he had filed for bankruptcy, and many of his partners and people that had deposited money in his bank started trying to withdraw money from their accounts. Eventually people were forming outside his offices, and his hq in Lima, Peru. Even riots started because the bank would not open and people could not withdraw their money. So much people had money deposited with him that it was simply impossible to give them their money, since most he had invested in other ventures expecting for returns. The Viceroy had no idea what to do, nothing of this sort had ever happened before, and people were furious. They wanted his head, but the guy was well connected. The Viceroy even asked if he could get his rich friends to bail him out. Many of them had already loaned him money for other ventures. Taking the oportunity, many of them inflated the loans Juan de la Cueva had taken, and ended up suing him for up to double what they actually gave him.
The guy was a smart and fierce businessman, one on par with the risky business experts of today's Wall Street, but eventually fate caught up with him. And unlike today, back then the government wouldn't bail out a corporation. Juan de la Cueva was finally put on trial, at first for having irregularities in his business, then for all the money he owed, as the investigation continued more and more shady business and ilegal stuff were uncovered. Many of his business partners were tried too after he snitched on them in order to get a reduced sentece. Some even got hanged for it. In the end due to his cooperation he was not executed, and was placed in prision for life. The economic crisis that ensued was devastating for many. Even government institutions had their money on his bank.
Edit: one detail I forgot to mention but it's fascinating nonetheless is that the debt he had when he filed for bankruptcy was so freaking high, his children and his children's children and so on were still in debt. It went on for centuries. It actually was not totally paid until the 1860's. It took him and his descendants almost three centuries to pay it off since some of his first investors had given him money as early as the 1560's.
#30
I was watching some security camera video of two criminals stealing a barrel of methylamine, and they used thermite to melt through the lock on the door, but then when they moved the barrel out they actually carried it instead of rolling it. It's a barrel! You roll it!
#31
I met a quick change artist when I worked for a bank. He short changed several people before coming to me. I refused to play his game but I have never seen anyone as good. He was doing quick math and exchanges that I'd never seen before or since. He would even lose money on some swaps and ask people to balance their drawer because he thinks they shorted him. Then, he'd proceed to .are a few more swaps and make back after they thought he was being legitimate. He's actually still used in training materials at my local bank last I checked.
If you ever run into this, only ever return what they give you. If they ask for 20 in fives and give you 45, return it to them as 45 in any denomination you want that includes their small amount. They tell you to keep a portion. Don't. Give it all back at once. My method is to never take it from the top of the counter. They know the cameras can be used to show their fraud that way and will take it all and leave. 90% can be avoided by only accepting cash from customers and checking their ID before exchanging money. They will leave and not even try on most of those.
#32
Former crime reporter here.
One of my first stories: large electronics wholesaler in Upstate New York, large truck backs to the loading bay at the start of the day. This is when cellphones were not as ubiquitous as they are today.
Five guys jump out, lock all the employees in the lunch room, use the forklift on site, fill a semi with high-end electronics, drive away. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise stolen in less than half an hour.
Employees eventually break out, call cops. Truck is long gone. Never caught, some of the electronics eventually turned up in NYC.
Story two: homeowners in a luxury house in a good neighborhood. They're on vacation.
Moving truck pulls up, legit markings, guys in jump suits empty the entire home. Couture clothing, tens of thousands of jewelry, high-end appliances, the works.
Apparently this was a stolen truck and a team of smart, opportunistic thieves. No one questioned the theft, because the truck was an actual moving truck.
#33
My grandfather arrested a guy for counterfeiting $20 bills back in the day. He mentioned the only reason they caught this guy was because a clerk noticed he had been given two bills with the exact same serial number. He firmly believed that if it weren’t for his slip-up, the perp could’ve been in the clear for awhile since he lived rather modestly. Those were the only details my grandpa was immediately aware of because the Secret Service took the perp into custody not long after, and took over the investigation.
Anonymouse 1 hour ago
Check out "I made it myself" by M. M Landress. I believe he was caught and worked with the Government to prevent others from using his methods.
#34
Years back I worked as a district employee at a large grocery chain. I was in charge of loss reduction. During a meeting at a store I was talking to a store manager about a report he is supposed to print weekly and check for high dollar returns from employees. He told me he doesn’t really look over it he has his bookkeeper keep an eye on it. My response was “what if it’s your bookkeeper that is showing on the report”. A month later the bookkeeper was taken out in handcuffs and the store manager was fired.
#35
Not a cop, but a fairly well known story from my last (major manufacturing) company. Apparently an engineer at another factory set up a shell corporation to buy fake parts from. He would regularly place purchase requests for "parts" that his equipment needed, and the area supervisor (who could approve up to $2k purchase requests) would approve them without looking to far into it. Then he would ship boxes filled with fake junk to himself at the factory, shipping/receiving would get it and finish the invoice/paperwork (thus paying himself) and nobody was any bit the wiser.
The trick was that this guy had been in that department for many years and basically knew everything about the machines in his area, and the shift supervisors tend to rotate around every few years. Give the parts believable names, and then set them up in your inventory system as critical spares or frequent wear items, and it handles itself. No supervisor would ever question it since it became so routine, and he had so much more machine knowledge then the sups that even when they would start out and ask what it was he could feed them a load of believable BS because there are tons of other legit things that go the same way. Apparently they figured he imbezzled a few million dollars over the years before getting caught.
#36
Got one that Im pretty sure is money laundering or tax fraud for sure. A business or person buys $500 of something from a non-profit (say girl scout cookies for example). They get a receipt saying they made a purchase from a non-profit for that amount. Then they turn around and donate the $500 worth of goods and get a receipt for $500 worth of charitable donations. Come tax time they have 2 - $500 deductions they can claim but they are only out $500.
#37
Back in the late 80s/early 90s a guy I knew went Interrailling around Europe for a couple of months.
Took a new credit card. Used it sensibly. Paris it of when he spent more than a few quid.
When he got to the town he was getting the ferry home from he bought lunch in a cafe, then maxed it out... Leather jacket, watch, jewelry, high end stuff... Then gets on the ferry. Mid-Channel the card goes over the side.
As soon he's off the boat in England he calls the card company... "I've lost my card in France... Last thing I bought was lunch." Provided the receipt from lunch, and they believed him, no follow up at all.
Doubt it would work now as a scam. They'd check the times, CCTV was less common and it was all paper not electronic transactions.
#38
(Australian) Not a cop but my little hustle used to be this: Walk through grocery store and do a big shop. Scan and pay for everything at self serve checkout while holding the most expensive tray of steaks/cheese etc, under my left arm. Once other groceries were bagged up, I'd walk out still holding the expensive stuff I didn't pay for under my left arm. In 10 yrs I've been asked to walk back and pay twice. You just act like you've come off a 12 hr shift and you just forgot so you can't possibly be charged with theft, you're just an overworked bluecollar worker that's half asleep.
#39
My husband worked at a grocery store for many years when he was a teenager. He knew of a clerk who would help his buddies steal hundreds of dollars of products from the store by some slight of hand at the register. He would hold a ten cent packet of kool aid in his hand as he would pretend to scan all the items so each item 'scanned' would only be ten cents each but to the cameras above and to anyone watching there wasn't any suspicion because the scanner would beep each time. Not sure if he ever got caught.
#40
I knew a guy many years ago who would go into a Walmart with a receipt for a bigger ticket item like an expensive Microwave, take one off the shelf and return it for cash at customer service.
#41
My office was in a strip mall with a storage unit facility behind it.
These crooks rented a unit so they had access to the whole facility. They’d go to someone else’s unit, use bolt cutters to get off the padlock, steal anything worth money, then replace the lock with the same brand and put stuff into their own unit for a bit.
The facility was walked through daily and all looked good cuz the locks were all there. And who visits your storage unit daily? So it took awhile for anyone to notice missing items.
We are a navy town and so lots of families would get a unit for a short time while their housing situation was settled. So, lots of good stuff to be had.
They got caught when other towns in the state figured out they’d already been hit and all storage facilities were notified. Also, I think they used their real names.
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