8 Criminals Who Took Dumbassery to Staggering Heights

8 Driver's License Thief

Let's roleplay (for you Aussie and/or Kiwi ladies, you keep what you're thinking under your hat and we'll chat later on Twitter. I'll get my schoolgirl uniform ready). I want you to pretend you're underage and wanting to get drunk. You're a bit of a shady troublemaker, not above committing crimes, and you're also desperately, hopelessly stupid. Like if a scientist was looking at your brain, he might call in a colleague just so other people could marvel at how dumb you are. So it goes without saying that you're also at Applebee's. Now, how do you get a drink?

If you answered use a stolen ID, you're still not thinking dumb enough. No scientist is marveling at how misshapen and useless your lobes are. No, what you meant to say is use an ID stolen from the waitress who is currently serving you. Yes, that's quite stupid.

This circus of buffoonery occurred in Lakewood, Colorado, when a waitress lost her ID, only to have it turn up again two weeks later when a customer came into the Applebee's where she worked and handed it right to her while ordering drinks. The waitress acted quickly, not even wiping the drool off of the card, and just handed it back to the exceptionally shitty identity thief before going to call the cops.

7 Epic Petty Theft

Some people seem to be so lucky in life that you'd swear their asses were packed with horseshoes. These are the kinds of people who win the lottery twice. Some people, conversely, never seem to catch a break. These guys get a new job, then break both legs on the first day. And then there are people like John Fletcher, who spent 23 out of 24 years in prison back in the 1950s and '60s as a result of committing over 100 thefts. A hundred thefts that netted him about $150 worth of loot in total.

Fletcher's final crime spree saw him rifling through three schools only six days after getting out of prison and stealing a whopping $3.60. I've walked through schools and accidentally stolen more money than that. There's more money than that in my couch right now.

Taking pity on the world's biggest sucker, a judge gave him probation and allowed him to try to take up work as a tailor, something he'd picked up during his remarkably long previous stay in jail.

6 LoJack Thief

If you had to make a list of things worth stealing, way down on the bottom of that list, around Susan Boyle's panties, you'd also find a LoJack. You know, a GPS tracking device that they slap on Lohans every now and then? And if you were also listing why it's a bad idea to steal these things, you might point out that the only reason those monitors exist is to track the movements of criminals, meaning if you have it in your possession, you are being monitored by law enforcement. So it must have been after a few cans of Duster in his system that a 40-year-old man in Wisconsin spied one on someone's porch and then sticky-fingered it back to his own home.

The monitor was originally owned by someone on house arrest. She still had the ankle bracelet on, but the stolen device was sort of the central hub, the tether, if you will, that kept her grounded to her house. It stays put and she stays put. If it leaves, well, satellites track it where it goes because it's not supposed to leave.

Only two options make sense in this scenario: The thief either didn't know what he was stealing or he did. If he did, then he probably eats a lot of lead paint, because stealing something that tells police where you are is a terrible idea. If he didn't, then what kind of compulsive kleptomaniac is this man that he sees just a random device on someone's porch and decides "That thing is gonna be mines"?

5 Take a Bat to a Gun Fight

Derrick Mosley is probably not all that bright. Like, have you ever had a cat and watched it chasing something so intently that it just ran headfirst into a wall? Imagine that moment when the cat just bounces off the wall being encapsulated inside a man. That man may very well be Derrick Mosley.

In need of some cash but lacking the brainpower to fathom a way to get it that didn't involve smashing stuff, Mosley took his baseball bat from the mantel and headed out into the world to seek his fortune. Would he pan for gold? Invent a newer, better dildo? Of course not. He would rob a store. A gun store.

As Babe Ruth rained down holy hell on a display case of unloaded guns at the store, the shopkeeper, who was packing a fully loaded one, put Mosley in his place in a way only an angry man with a lethal weapon facing down a moron with a stick can. When police arrived, Mosley was face down in some broken glass with a gun pointed at him, because obviously he was.

4 Would-Be Bear Killer

I hope that in some way this story was inspired by Nic Cage. I like the idea that people are out there watching Nic Cage movies thinking "Yes, I need to do some of this in my real life." It doesn't even matter what movie, either, just so long as Cage had a prominent role in it.

In this case, Clyde Gardner took a page from the Nic Cage opus The Wicker Man. Did he run afoul of a vagicentric island full of beekeepers? Did he wonder aloud how that doll got burned? Better. He schemed to dress up like a bear and commit unwholesome murder!

Gardner's plan was to find a real-life bear and kill it. How? Who knows, maybe give it an aneurysm by explaining this dumb-shit plan. Once the bear was dead, he would skin it. Then he would dress up in the skin and wait outside his girlfriend's home. Once she took out the garbage, he would attack her, in the bear skin, and use the bear claws to maul her to death, thus ensuring that the evidence pointed entirely to a bear as the culprit. It was almost too easy.

How did his plan fail? Gardner got lazy and changed plans, instead just asking a buddy if he wouldn't mind running his girlfriend over instead. The buddy notified the cops, and Gardner was rewarded with 15 years in prison.

3 Pot Ransom

Every so often you'll hear about a plot cops come up with to catch criminals that's so brilliant in its stupidity, you're convinced it could never work. The most famous is inviting parole violators to come to the police station to pick up a boat or a vacation they won, which somehow actually duped a good number of idiots into showing up.

Managing to be even more brazen were police in Marathon, Florida, who found a small grow operation and seized all the plants, leaving behind nothing but a ransom note that basically said if you want your pot back, call to negotiate. So Steve Locasio called.

I like to think cries of "derp" echoed throughout the halls of the police station after the call was made, especially since they'd only left the note as a joke in the first place. Nonetheless, Locasio called looking for his weed and negotiated a price of $200, which he handed over to an undercover officer shortly thereafter, just before being arrested.

2 The Bearded Lady

Putting on a disguise to commit a crime is not a half bad idea. Why use your real face when so many masks are available? And the better the disguise, the better your chances of getting away, right? That's pretty much the key, though, that "better" part. Which is to say a shitty disguise gives you a shitty chance of pulling off your little scheme. If you dress up like a machine-gun-toting elephant with a bloody erection, that's an awful disguise. People will remember that and be able to say they saw you running south or whatever. Likewise, if you do what Dennis Hawkins did, you will also get caught.

Hawkins, a bank robber, put on some clown pants, a blonde wig, and a pair of sweet, fake titties. Also his big, manly black mustache and goatee combo. Using a BB gun, he held up the bank and escaped to a car, forcing the owner out. She called the police while Hawkins sat in the driver's seat and opened his bag of loot, setting off the dye pack inside and adding a nice layer of red paint to his disguise. This either crushed Hawkins' spirit or just blew his mind, insofar as he stayed put until cops arrived and arrested him for robbery and the lesser charge of public dipshittery.

1 Bank Robber YouTube Star

Social media can be best described as a technological buttfucker stew. It offers you the opportunity to find out what people you never cared about in grade school are up to and what people you don't know and will never know are doing right now, in real time, in under 140 characters and/or via sepia-tone photos. What an age we live in.

The most exciting use of social media is, of course, to be stupid. Like super stupid. Maybe you post how your boss is a dumbass when he's on your friend list, or maybe you post photos of the party you had when your parents were out of town so they can see it from their hotel. And maybe you rob a bank and then make a seven-minute YouTube video in which you admit to robbing the bank and stealing a car prior to the robbery, and then you count out the cash on camera, just in case anyone wasn't sure it was true. Also you then say how you love Green Day, because you'll want to put a cherry on your dipshit cake.

Nineteen-year-old Hannah Sabata did all of these things, possibly after spending her formative years in a glue factory, but we'll never know for sure. But what we do know is she also wrote "I just stole a car and robbed a bank. Now I'm rich, I can pay off my college financial aid and tomorrow I'm going for a shopping spree. Bite me" to go along with her video, because she needed the world to know what the little devil on her shoulder was drunkenly slurring into her ear when she hatched this scheme.

Because Sabata's mental powers are on par with those of a turnip, she was wearing the same clothes in the video, described the car she stole, and pretty much explained every detail of the crime, so there was really no way for her to get away with it at all, barring YouTube going out of business within an hour or so of her posting it. She was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison. Maybe she can vlog.

Always on the go but can't get enough of Cracked? We have an Android app and iOS reader for you to pick from so you never miss another article.