7 Criminals Who Made Getting Caught Look Easy

7 Can You Take a Message? And Two Bomb Threats?

Reports indicate that Thomas Mines of Sheridan, Wyoming, was high on methamphetamine, a registered sex offender, and due in court for violating his probation for burglary charges. He quite correctly surmised that he was going to jail. Unfortunately, this depleted his entire stock of correct thoughts, and he told newspapers that he decided to avoid prison by calling in a bomb threat to the courthouse. Then two more bomb threats to two local schools. A man couldn't screw himself harder with a phone without lube and a hateful proctologist.

His excuses were being high on meth and wanting to spend one last day with his wife and child, which means he's either the world's worst father or its greatest multitasker.

When someone calls in school bomb threats as decoys from his real objective, he's meant to lead an army of Europeans to rob the Federal Reserve Bank of New York while distracting John McClane. He's not meant to be crashing at his mother-in-law's house. Yes, he called in mass-child-murder-level terrorist threats from his mother-in-law's house. No, we don't think that's even in the top 10 reasons why she probably hates him.

You couldn't publicly ruin your life, criminal record, and karma harder if you kicked the pope off that balcony onto the visiting Dalai Lama. Mines told local papers that he only called the schools because the courthouse didn't take him seriously, which has to be the most optimistic amelioration in history. When you've already admitted to threatening to bomb the place in charge of sentencing your ass for shit like that, you don't haggle about the purity of your intentions in involving two schools. And when your best hope is convincing people that you used two buildings full of innocent schoolchildren as terrorist voice mail, just give up.

6 The Worst Crime Scene Ever

Police told Jason Rodriguez that he had been released on his own recognizance, which he misinterpreted to mean that he was an invisible Zen master who could not be identified by anyone but his own true self. Or at least that's the least-dumb explanation for what happened next. They released him from the station's side door, perhaps precognitively ashamed to be seen with someone so stupid, and he walked to the front door of the open, fully lit, and security camera-ed police station and vandalized it.

Stupidity could only have dumped him back in the police station faster if they'd made him leave through a revolving door. The front door of a police station is the most arrestable location in the world. At this point the security cameras weren't a 1984 nightmare but a genuine labor-saving device, as well as providing vital evidence, not for the prosecution, but for everyone, because otherwise no one would believe anyone could be so stupid.

It's a tragic misuse of municipal art. Graffiti can be a powerful force for reclaiming public spaces, a reaction against the insane idea that shampoo corporations are allowed to decorate where we live while we aren't. And "Copulate Tha Cops" is the number two theme of all graffiti (just below the artist proving that he can spell his own name), one you can write almost anywhere and meet with widespread agreement. But that "almost" means "not directly on the most visible surface of a police station." We're talking about a criminal so stupid that they didn't even need one-way glass to catch him in the act. Regular glass was more than confusing enough for him to incriminate himself in full public view.

5 Phone Thief Gives Justice a Second Chance

When a Russian judge released self-confessed phone-thiever Alexander Kishko, Alex reportedly decided he should give justice a do-over by phone-thievorizing the judge's phone before leaving the building. This guy steals phones so often that we had to create a new verb for him, and a new tense: the present-imperfectly-phone-thievorizing. Because for everyone else it's just the present tense. And because he was immediately caught in the act again.

The original charge was for stealing a patient's cellphone from a clinic, so maybe this was his conscience hot-wiring his subconscious to remove him from the general population. When Plan A is "Find terribly sick people and steal from them" -- you don't have to leave your metal objects and electronics in a drawer in another room when you're just going to the doc for the flu -- then Plan B really should be ceasing to exist as quickly as possible. He admitted to that theft in court and was only released when the original owner dropped charges after he paid her. A tad optimistically, he then tried to turn a profit on his day in court.

Even if he'd gotten away with it, we don't see how he imagined getting far. Maybe he thought caller ID is legally binding, so that when the judge hauled back the admitted phone thief in the Case of the Thieved Phone, he could call the courtroom and order his own release.

4 Stolen Credit Card for Fraud Fingerprints Fee

Newspapers report that a man charged with fraud in Mason, Michigan, attempted to pay for his fingerprinting with a stolen credit card. Unfortunately, becoming a living parody of America's cash-based legal system didn't protect him from further prosecution.

"Should I use a stolen credit card?" has to be a complicated decision for those in straits dire enough to consider it. You have to balance need against risk, and of course check if the entire building you're in -- including the person you're about to hand the card to -- works for the police department. At that point you might want to lean toward "no."

The Mason sheriff's office released the world's worst fraudster pending further charges, safe in the knowledge that if he tried to flee the state, he'd probably do so by dressing as a bag of evidence and hiding in the back of a highway patrol car. Or by dressing in a suit composed entirely of question marks and going back to attacking Batman.

3 I Stole Your Money, You Stole My Heart

Police in Columbus, Ohio, report that Stephfon Bennett has been arrested for robbery and desperately needs a date. They report that he was captured two hours after being suspected of robbing Daniel and Diana Martinez when he arrived at Diana's house to ask her out. From a certain alpha male-style brain it makes sense: He now knows for a fact that he is better at fighting and has more money than her current date. It also proves that alpha masculinity is idiotic bullshit.

We can only assume that Bennett was an advanced pick-up artist trying out an experimental new form of super-negging and meeting with the same level of success all such douchebaggery deserves. We can say he was dedicated, because he was still outside the house when police arrived to arrest him. And that, Hollywood writers, is what really happens when someone's entire romantic strategy is totally dedicating themselves to a woman no matter what reality and sanity might say about it.

Returning to claim the love of the one you've already stolen from only works when you're a Greek myth, and trying it in the real world leads to similar levels of disbelief that you're real.

2 Your Underage Daughter Wouldn't Sleep With Me

A 57-year-old Stockholm man reportedly met a 13-year-old on an Internet dating site and transferred 500 kronor ($72 in 2010) into her bank account. When he arrived at their sex rendezvous, she wasn't there, proving that she wasn't totally stupid.

He found her home phone number, explained the situation to her father, and demanded his money back. This phone call had to simultaneously be both the greatest nightmare and the greatest relief in a father's life. Yes, a creepy Internet man is trying to have sex with your daughter, but he's an idiot. This resulted in a state known as "SO arrested," which tells us that the father's chainsaw must have been in the shop that week.

The man claimed that he thought the girl was much older. So he normally calls the parents of his dates to complain when things don't work out? That would explain why he's still being stood up for dates he already paid for at 57.

Of course he was easily caught and fined by a Swedish court. Wait, fined? That's it? Damn, Sweden, the guy trying to have sex with a child and then demanding his money back is not the time to try out ironic punishments. Or if it is, "illegally demanding a refund" is not the crime you're meant to be ironically punishing.

1 Fake Bomb Detectors

British businessman Gary Bolton has been jailed for seven years for selling fake bomb detectors. The court heard from the world's most understated Home Office defense expert that the device had "no credibility as an explosive detector," because it had no functioning parts of any kind. The BBC reports that X-rays revealed the devices to be totally empty. They were just plastic boxes with handles, antennae, and a price tag of 10,000 pounds.

That is the most obvious and scumbaggy crime possible. If you build a machine that can't detect bombs, that is going to become terrifyingly clear to some poor bastard, and his surviving colleagues are going to be very upset. And have more of your empty boxes left to examine. Hell, they'll even be able to see the empty void inside the first one when it's been blown open. Was his plan to have every single user of the device exploded so that they couldn't press charges?

The judge said Bolton had damaged the reputation of British trade abroad. If you're selling fake bomb detectors and the only thing you damage is a reputation, that's the only reason you're being sentenced by a court instead of a crowd of amputees using their remaining limbs to loft burning torches and a scaffold. That may still happen when the various global security agencies he just tried to mass-manslaughter find out that he's only been jailed for seven years. That's a shorter sentence than some marijuana dealers receive, and that stuff prevents people from going out and getting bombed.

Luke has a website, tumbles, and responds to every single tweet.

Adulate more admirable figures with Who's the Man? Superman vs. He-Man, or avoid assholery yourself with 5 Nerd Hacks That Make You Less of a Jerk.

Enjoy more idiotic criminal capers with The 9 Most Hilarious Ways Criminals Were Caught or more effective felons with 7 Wanted Criminals Who Made Mocking the Police into an Art Form.

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