5 Facepalm Cases Of Criminals Who Got Themselves Caught
Question: What do you get when you add vanity and smugness to a criminal with access to the internet? You get caught, is what you get. We may think that attention would be the last thing a criminal would want, but it's been proven time and time again that 1) that's just not the case, and 2) criminals can be just as self-obsessed as any celebrity on Instagram. Here follows the tales of criminals who, while supposedly trying to hide their crimes from authorities, couldn't stop themselves from bragging about it to the public at large.
Man Doesn't Like His Fugitive Photo, Sends "Better One" To Cops
Listen, we get it. Some days just won't be a good photo day. But if your goal in life is to get the picture-perfect mug shot, we'd recommend you reevaluate and maybe adjust your aspirations, in general. And by "you," we're talking to Donald "Chip" Pugh, specifically. Pugh was charged with a string
Sure, it was a pretty average image, but it's not like mug shots are taken by world-class photographers aching to capture the aesthetics of alleged drunk drivers. But it just wasn't good enough for Pugh. He was not okay with the world thinking that this mediocre image was a true representation of who he really was. So he texted the police a selfie, writing: "Here is a better photo, that one is terrible".
The police in Lima, Ohio, took this, er, better photo of Pugh and promptly posted it to their Facebook page, presumably asking people for help in locating the man with the same distinct mustache who has now also grown a pair of sunglasses. Authorities eventually located and arrested him in Florida, and when asked about why he sent the police a selfie during an interview with an Ohio radio station, he said: "Man, they just did me wrong. They put a picture out that made me look like I was Thundercat ... or James Brown on the run. I can't do that."
Yeah. We too hate it when mug shot photos make us look like famous musicians. It's the worst.
Capitol Rioters Keep Getting Caught In The Dumbest Ways
From standouts like that "Shaman" guy who seemingly mistook the Capitol insurrection for a cosplay event, to anyone who didn't think to hide their face from photos that would inevitably be widely circulated on social media, there's really just no end to the stupidity of the rioters who thought they'd get away with what they did on January 6, 2021.
The irony here of course is that, if these idiots had worn masks like everyone else during the pandemic, it would've been harder to recognize their faces in the countless photos taken that day. Not that it would've mattered for a lot of them, because many (so, so many) of them left a trail of written messages all over social media, bragging about their part that day. Some of them wore clothes highly recognizable to people who knew them. Others felt the need to livestream themselves breaching the Capitol's defense, because vloggers gonna vlog, we guess. The stories here are just too dumb to not list, so here's a freaking list:
- Hunter Seefried couldn't stop bragging to his coworker about storming the Capitol with his father
- Robert Packer was recognized by a store owner in Virginia because of his very distinct and extremely gross sweatshirt that read "Camp Auschwitz"
- Derrick Evans, the former West Virginia state lawmaker who livestreamed himself on Facebook as he stormed the Capitol. Just to make sure everyone knew it was really him, he yelled: "We're in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!"
- Nick Ochs, a self-proclaimed Proud Boys "Elder" who tweeted a selfie while smoking inside the building with the words: "Hello from the Capital lol"
- Klete Keller, a two-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer, was spotted thanks to his Team USA Olympic jacket;
- Jenny Ryan, the Texas realtor who really wanted you to hire her as your realtor because she said so in a Facebook video: "Y'all know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor." In another video she said: "You guys, can you believe this? I'm not messing around. When I come to sell your house, this is what I'll do. I'll ... sell your house." She almost said "storm" there, didn't she? Good save.
- Robert Chapman, who bragged about being part of the insurrection on the dating app Bumble. The person he was looking to date responded with, "We are not a match," and notified the FBI.
- Richard Michetti, who texted his ex photos of the insurrection along with: "If you can't see the election was stolen you're a moron." She went to the police the next day.
There's also the guy who wore his jacket with the name and number of his painting business on full display, as well as the guy who was arrested after threatening an older relative who wanted to go out and get the COVID-19 vaccine because of course he believed that it would "eventually kill off a lot of people as a population control method from the government."
Girl Posts Selfie With Friend Before Murdering Her (With Murder Weapon In The Photo)
This one's pretty grim, but in an objective world it also gets the label of "WTF were you thinking?" Turns out, Cheyenne Rose Antoine wasn't thinking at all because, well, she was allegedly drunk and high out of her mind when she went next-level Mean Girls
Antoine initially told police that the pair had gone to a house party, then did some bar hopping before her friend left with a strange man and Antoine went to see her uncle. That story didn't check out, however, and the police started looking at Antoine's Facebook posts to try and establish the two's actual movements that night. Antoine had posted on her (murdered) friend's page the next morning, asking where she was and saying things like, "Hope you made it home safe." It was also established that she had asked her uncle to give the police a false alibi.
The belt in the photo was the nail in the coffin. That, and the fact that Antoine eventually confessed to a friend, saying that she and Gargol were both drunk and high on weed when they got into an argument and, well, the belts came off. Imagine having a photo like that pop up in your Facebook Memories.
"Sniper" Posts Photo Of His Rifle On Twitter, Asks For Retweets To Shoot Random Pedestrians
On an evening in March 2014, people were scrolling through Twitter looking for whatever was trending on social media back then (it was, coincidentally, the Year of the Selfie), when some poor innocents came across an ominous and alarming tweet. It showed a rifle on a ledge of a building, aimed at a street below, with the following words: "100 RT's and I'll shoot someone walking." Disturbing, for sure, so of course it managed to garner thousands of retweets because humanity is doomed. An hour later, the now defunct account tweeted a follow up showing a man lying on the ground with the words: "Man down. Mission Completed."
The police were able to trace the tweet to an apartment in Downtown L.A., and 20-year-old Dakkari McAnuff was arrested the following day ... only to tell the cops that it was just a prank. See, McAnuff and friends were part of a group called MAD Pranksters who moved to L.A. from Houston, Texas because -- you guessed it -- they wanted to make it in Hollywood. Only, no one told them that threatening civilians with a rifle isn't how you get the right attention. These guys were genuinely stunned that the LAPD couldn't understand their commitment to the art of pranking -- "it was only an air rifle, for Pete's sake!" -- and they insisted on using the ol' Prankster Party line that it was an obvious hoax, and all the clues were in the images themselves.
But if someone needs to explain to you why the gamification of murder isn't cool, and why making any public threats of violence will cause the cops to jump on your ass quicker than you can say "ACAB!," then maybe it's time to put down the air rifle, hang up your prankster hat, and realize that terrorizing random people isn't going to help you bust into Hollywood. Well, at least not like that.
The Nigerian Fraudsters Who Couldn't Stop Bragging About Their Wealth Online
Olalekan Jacob Ponle, who goes by the name "mrwoodbery" on Instagram, posted a picture of himself standing next to a bright yellow Lamborghini in Dubai with the words: "Stop letting people make you feel guilty for the wealth you've acquired." A month later he was arrested in Dubai for money laundering and cyber fraud. Some of his colleagues who were also arrested during the huge operation posted similar "Brag-and-be-Absolved" images, like Ramon Olorunwa Abbas, a.k.a. "Hushpuppi:"
Both Ponle and Abbas were extradited to the US and charged with laundering a shit-ton of cash they made through cybercrimes. It was really only a matter of time, as questions were raised about where in the world they were getting all the wealth they so flaunted on social media. And while they thought they were hiding their identities, U.S. detectives were able to catch the unintentional information they shared on their online profiles. Said one of the senior prosecutors: "I think there's probably a certain arrogance when they believe they've been careful about maintaining anonymity in their online identities, but they live high on the hog and get careless on social media."
It's that old adage: Just because you have money doesn't mean you're a genius. Someone maybe tell that to rich people.
Top Image: Stijn.Berghmans/Wiki Commons
