Dumbest. Criminal. Ever.

February 23, 2005 8:01 AM

"So...we set everything up. We planned it out. Turned my house into a ... bank actually and acted it out for like weeks," the caller said, adding he and others were "buyin' Louis Vuitton this, Blass that, everything man." If you robbed a bank five months ago and did such a good job that you didn't get caught and the police have no leads, would you keep quiet? Not if you're this guy, who was caught when he called into the Confessions segment of the Drex Morning Show to brag about it five months later.
posted by SisterHavana (15 comments total)

Wow, all I can say is, smooth move, Exlax!
posted by fenriq at 8:13 AM on February 23, 2005

The prisons are filled with geniuses.
posted by caddis at 8:15 AM on February 23, 2005

Those wacky morning shock jocks......
posted by emptybowl at 8:17 AM on February 23, 2005

Not sure if this is 'the best of the web', but it sure is funny. Exhibitionists should not rob banks.
$81k isn't much of a haul anyway, what an eejit.
posted by asok at 8:20 AM on February 23, 2005

Isn't that always the thing about crimes though? It's the same thing with hacking. You could hack into whatever you wanted, and maybe get away with it, but no, the ego demands you tell somebody. Because if nobody knows you did it, then how can it be validated for you?

Fun stuff..
posted by cavalier at 8:21 AM on February 23, 2005

Because if nobody knows you did it, then how can it be validated for you?

I'd accept an $81,000 payment to not tell anyone. But that's just me.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 8:34 AM on February 23, 2005

So is a person from Dolton called doltish, or just a dolt?
posted by breezeway at 9:15 AM on February 23, 2005

Morale: never buy a Louis Vuitton wallet with cash.
posted by kika at 9:22 AM on February 23, 2005

This kind of reminds me of a movie (can't remember the name, too lazy to look it up) in which an old and experience criminal (Robert deNiro) tells a young and reckless criminal (Edward Norton) that he should decide what he wants and be prepared to spend the rest of his life getting it. And I thought, in that case, why wouldn't you just get a real job instead?
posted by orange swan at 9:39 AM on February 23, 2005

Damn. If I had an extra $81,000 lying around, I wouldn't be buying a f'ing Louis Vitton wallet -- I'd be finding a way to use it as seed money to make more money. I mean, come ON. Do these guys think "well, we did it once, so we can blow it all and do it again when the money runs out"? What a maroon.
posted by davejay at 9:42 AM on February 23, 2005

Orange swan: that would be The Score.

And davejay: I'm sure that's EXACTLY what these guys were thinking. I mean, jesus, we already know how dumb this guy is. It should be a given that he is too dumb to realize what to do with the money.
posted by antifuse at 9:59 AM on February 23, 2005

Will wonders never cease. I actually feel sorry for the guy. I mean, if you're dumb enough to make the call, it must come as quite a surprise when they knock your door down.
posted by OmieWise at 10:17 AM on February 23, 2005

I'm of two minds about this sort of thing. The first is in agreement with cavalier and antifuse on the general point that criminals have a high propensity for being foolish. From this viewpoint, I especially like Elmore Leonard's novels and movies like Fargo, which greatly demythologize criminals and criminal behavior and show them as the misfits and dimwits they usually are.

The second, opposing, line of thought is that there's confirmation bias going on here: after all, by this very formulation, the smart and wise criminals don't (largely) get caught.

And then there's the point that this sort of crime is perhaps a smaller portion of all crime and that most of it doesn't fit into this paradigm at all. It's ghetto kids working in the drug business, people in extremis, or just an example of momentary foolishness to which all of us are occasionally prone.

Finally, like other people of my temperment, I've spent a lot of time considering how one might commot various crimes and be fairly confident of getting away with it. And almost always, as orange swan points out, it's a lot of work. I mean, the motivation for committing a crime is expediency, isn't it? If it's a lot of work, it's not expedient, and there's an enormous personal risk involved, how likely is it that a cost-benefit analysis will favor it? Not very. Included in this are the practical difficulties of keeping absolutely secrecy about something very significant in your life. Forget calling up a radio station, far more crimes are solved and criminals caught because they tell their significant others, friends, or other trusted people. Or those people find out from close contact.

It's really not worth the trouble to be a "good", successful criminal. Or at least regarding most types of criminal activity. I'm sure there are exceptions.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:23 AM on February 23, 2005

Ethereal Bligh

I mean, the motivation for committing a crime is expediency, isn't it?

I've always thought of crimes like these, that require meticulous planning and execution, as having much in common with gambling, at least as far as motivation goes, in other words, I'm sure expediency comes into the equation, but I think you also have to factor in the very thrill of it, both the planning and the execution. That's gotta be a hell of a rush.
posted by kcds at 11:15 AM on February 23, 2005

Ethereal Bligh: It's really not worth the trouble to be a "good", successful criminal.

Generally that's true, but it depends on the circumstances. If you're poor and don't have a good education, crime might pay better than a job at McDonald's.

I heard somewhere that one of the reasons for the decline of the New York mafia is that they lost the war for talent in the late 90s. When the economy is doing well, getting a regular job pays better than organized crime.
posted by Triplanetary at 11:29 AM on February 23, 2005