Stupid Criminal Tricks: Teen boasts about bank robbery on YouTube

It's been a while since we have updated the Stupid Criminal Tricks category on here. But we've found something that qualifies stupendously well to be labeled with this heading.

But before we cover that, let's have a few words of advice that are worth remembering.

One, don't rob banks. It's both a crime and a sin. These things are bad.

Two, don't rob banks. You have a very low probability of getting away with the crime. I read a while back that something like 85% of bank robbers are caught. Plus, see Item One.

Three, if you are determined to ignore the first two items, DON'T BRAG ABOUT IT ONLINE. Also DON'T POST VIDEOS WAVING YOUR STOLEN MONEY AROUND. These are things that will pretty much *guarantee* that you're going to end up in with those 85% of failed bank robbers. Also, see Items One and Two.

OK, so having covered that, here is the story of someone who paid no mind to any of those three items of advice. Or you can watch the self-incriminating video below, where she shows the drugs and paraphernalia she stole from a car and admits to stealing a car, along with everything referenced above.

Oh, and in the few minutes of video I've watched so far, all the cue cards have been BACKWARD. So either she's shooting the video in a mirror, or she's raising them up so the front, not the back, is facing her. I couldn't help but think of the "This is your brain on drugs" commercial.

Unsurprisingly, she was arrested on the day the video was posted. Gee, I wonder why. See Items, One, Two, and Three.

Stupid Criminal Tricks

It's baaaaack! I have a stupendous example of Stupid Criminal Tricks to post

Burglar Breaks Into Home to Dry Off, Check Facebook Page

Too bad he won't be able to check his Facebook page from JAIL!

STUPID Criminal Tricks. LOL

BWAHAHA... Here's the latest entry for the Stupid Criminal Tricks file.

Posted on Wed, Jul. 14, 2010

Man posts bail with counterfeit bills

By Peter Mucha

Inquirer Staff Writer

Most people post bail to stay out of jail.

Not to risk a lot more time there.

According to Cinnaminson Police, a Camden man included counterfeit $20 bills while paying his $400 bail on July 7.

Lousy counterfeit $20s.

Run off on a color copier, apparently.

"They're pretty poor. I didn't have to touch them and I knew they were bad," said Detective Sgt. William K. Covert.

They were almost as obvious as the copies of $1 bills he's seen created by students trying to fool soda machines.

The paper didn't feel right. It lacked the colored threads. And Andrew Jackson's face was kind of fuzzy.

Ronald White, 35, was arrested for several counts of shoplifting from a Burlington Coat Factory and Shop-Rite on Route 130.

He had $900 in cash on him, not all of it counterfeit.

Cash is accepted at both stores.

Police also discovered he had outstanding warrants from Camden that required $400 for bail.

So, while the shoplifting charges were being processed, White paid the bail.

The next day, Covert discovered that five of the $20 bills were funny money.

Very phony funny money.

No way these bills would ever pass the pen test, where a special marker is dragged across.

Some forgers bleach $5 bills, then reprint them with images from $100 bills, hoping to fool the pen test, Covert said.

Holding such bills up to a light quickly reveals they're fake.

A complaint was signed against White for forgery.

But before police found him, he found police.

On Monday, White turned up at the Cinnaminson Police station, saying he overpaid for the bail and wanted his money back.

In his possession were two more bogus $20 bills, police said.

Today, he was still in Burlington County Jail, in lieu of paying $5,000 cash bail.

"One of my favorite sayings is, you can't teach stupid, because every day something else comes up and you just shake your head," Covert said.

Today's installment of Stupid Criminal Tricks: a burglar pauses to update his Facebook status while in the act of robbing someone's home. He left himself logged in on the victim's computer, which allowed the police to track him down and arrest him.

CLICK HERE to read "Facebook break leads to burglary suspect"

BWAHAHA! Knucklehead!

Bwahaha! DUMMYYYYY...! Here's the latest entry for the Stupid Criminal Tricks file!

Bank Robber Arrested After Boasting of Crime on Myspace

May 29, 2009 9:00 AM PDT
Bank robber arrested after boasting of crime on MySpace
by Dong Ngo
Here's a bizarre use of MySpace that I'm actually glad about.

According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice in Columbia, S.C., a man's message on his MySpace page helped authorities arrest him on bank robbery charges.

Joseph Wade Northington, 27, of Roanoke, Va., pleaded guilty Thursday in a Columbia, S.C., federal court to using a firearm during a violent crime.

On January 20, during a visit to North Augusta, S.C. Northington allegedly robbed the Security Federal Bank there of $3,924. After he returned to Virginia, the man with whom he stayed during the visit allegedly recognized Northington in surveillance photos shown on television and notified authorities.

Investigators learned that Northington, who had a gunshot scar on his face, used MySpace, and accessed his page. There they found that he had posted a message mentioning the robbery: "One in the head still ain't dead!!!!!! On tha run for robbin a bank Love all of yall."

Nine days later, Northington was arrested in Virginia.

Northington is now facing a fine of $250,000 and imprisonment for a minimum of seven years and a maximum of life. By Thursday, Northington's MySpace page was still up with the status reading "Wanted."

Considering how he kept his MySpace status up to date, it's going to be very difficult for Northington's attorney to defend him. I just wonder how he's going to survive in a prison where the access to the Internet is limited, if available at all.

The latest installment in the Stupid Criminal Tricks files:

Police: Bank robber nabs $3K, leaves wallet behind

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Police didn't have to dust for fingerprints to find this suspect — they just rifled through the wallet he left behind at the scene. Albert Vincent Perkins was charged with robbing First Federal Bank in Kansas City on Thursday. Police said he walked into the bank, handed the teller a plastic bag and ordered her to give him all of the $100 bills. Then he walked out of the bank — but left his wallet sitting on the counter.

The U.S. attorney's office said the teller and a customer in the bank identified the photo on the driver's license and another photo in the wallet as the robber.

Perkins was arrested Thursday night. Police say he took about $3,100.

Bwahaha! I wish the Karma Train would be as swift to run over EVERY crook!

HA HA HA... Here's the latest entry to Stupid Criminal Tricks, courtesy of Technically Incorrect:

April 6, 2009 11:04 PM PDT

Kid's cell calls police while he allegedly boasts of burglaries

by Chris Matyszczyk

There are those who believe machines have minds of their own.

In which case, the cell phone belonging to a 16-year-old from Peoria, Ariz., is of a mind to uphold truth, justice and to make 16-year-old thieves look really, really stupid.

The unnamed teen was allegedly hanging with his buds and regaling them with what seems to be the story of how he had ripped a stereo from a car and stolen a Cricket phone.

While his friends were apparently unimpressed with the Cricket (they're rather more moved by BlackBerries), I am stunned to discover that people these days bother to rip stereos out of cars. Somehow that seems so 1987.

Still, in the pulsating moments that the kid was boasting of his crimes, his cell phone decided to call 911.

I know that sentence sounds a little like a scene from the CW's quite rivet-free "Supernatural." And no one is quite sure how the phone suddenly spurted into action.

"Dear Kid, You steal that Corolla and I'm calling the cops."

(Credit: CC Wandering One/Flickr)

Perhaps the vibrations from the nether regions of the teen, engendered by his excited pride at pulling off the Peoria Job, activated a one-touch button to 911 on the cell phone in his pocket.

But imagine the amusement of the guardians of the law as they enjoyed the feast of felony being described.

You can listen to the call here, courtesy of the Phoenix New Times.

You may enjoy his words when speaking of lifting the stereo: "It took all my energy to lift it out of the car."

Perhaps it took all his gray matter too.

The police kept listening in for quite a while, performed a little signal triangulation and, according to a police spokesperson, actually caught the stereo-stealer with the machine still in his hands.

He was charged with felony vehicle burglary.

It is rumored that the cell phone has been nominated for a police commendation.

Stupid Criminal Tricks...

This one was even caught on tape. Two inmates make a break for it, but forget that they're handcuffed together.



LOLOL... serves 'em right!

Stupid Criminal Tricks: Text Messages Nab Carjacking Suspects

If texting is dangerous while driving a car, it's downright idiotic while stealing one.

An Ohio man used a friend's cell phone to get back his car, cell phone, and cash, all of which were stolen in a car jacking, according to a local TV report. Alan Heuss was sitting in his running BMW in Columbus on Wednesday when an armed man opened a passenger door, stuck a gun in his face, and made off with his stuff.

After filing a police report, Heuss was meeting with some friends to drown his sorrows when one suggested that they try to contact the thieves by texting Heuss' stolen cell phone.

"He said, 'I'm going to text these guys, I'm going to blow some smoke their way,'" Heuss told the station. "He said, 'I'm going to tell them I've got a bunch of hot chicks, as if I'm texting you, and that we've got some drugs, too.'"

The carjacking suspects fell for the rouse and went to an address sent to them by Heuss' friend just seven hours after the carjacking. But instead of the "hot chick with drugs" they were expecting, they were met with by cops with cuffs.

And to make things easier for the officers, the suspects showed up in the stolen car.

Gotta love it when we witness people getting a visit from the Karma Fairy. It should only happen on a more regular basis.

Today's installment of Stupid Criminal Tricks can be found on MSNBC's site:

Oops! Pay stub used as bank robbery note

Man initially gets away with $400 but leaves his name, address

updated 10:14 p.m. ET, Mon., Dec. 29, 2008

CHICAGO - The robber's threatening note made a Chicago bank job easy to solve: The FBI says the suspect wrote it on his pay stub. An FBI affidavit said the man walked into a Fifth Third Bank on Friday and handed a teller a note that read "Be Quick Be Quit (sic). Give your cash or I'll shoot."

The robber got about $400 but left half of his note. Investigators found the other half outside the bank's front doors. Authorities say that part of the man's October pay stub had his name and address.

The suspect was arrested at his Cary home. A judge ordered him held without bond Monday. If convicted of bank robbery, he faces 20 years in prison.

To borrow a phrase I saw someone else use recently, "I guess this guy won't miss any Mensa meetings while he's in jail".

Hahaha! We bring you the latest edition of "Stupid Criminal Tricks"! Seems that Mr. Burglar tried to steal the laptop of a first-year law student, who was horrified at the prospect of losing an entire year's worth of course work. Mr. Student proceeded to beat the living daylights out of Mr. Burglar.

I love it when the good guys win!

OK. Just how foolish does a person have to be, to be days away from making a guilty plea for credit card fraud, and to STEAL ANOTHER CREDIT CARD in the meantime?

Kirsch allegedly ripped off another credit card

by brian x. mccrone / metro philadelphia

MAY 29, 2008

PHILADELPHIA. Jocelyn Kirsch, the former Drexel University student infamous n for her obsessions with stealing people’s credit cards and taking photographs in bikinis, was back in federal court yesterday for allegedly stealing another credit card while out on bail.

Kirsch, 23, allegedly stole the card in the last few weeks from an acquaintance in California, where she is living temporarily with her mother and stepfather. She was forced to fly back across the country for the hearing yesterday. Federal Judge Lynne Sitarski ordered her into 24-hour house arrest until her plea hearing next Thursday.

Kirsch is expected to plead guilty at that hearing to federal charges of identity theft in excess of $120,000, court officials said yesterday.

And while the once excessively camera-friendly college girl has allegedly held tightly to her affinity for stealing, she has definitely lost her love for the camera.

The slender, black-haired Kirsch avoided all the television crews and newspaper photographers stationed outside at the federal courthouse on Market Street.

Dressed in a baggy, gray hooded University of Pennsylvania sweatshirt and black velour pants, she was led into the courtroom in handcuffs by U.S. marshals and waited more than 30 minutes through other prisoners’ hearings.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Lappen would not release details of the most recent identity theft charge, saying only that the new theft occurred while Kirsch has been out on bail and staying with her mother in Novato, Marin County, Calif.

“She didn’t know the victim well,” Lappen said, though he wouldn’t say whether the victim was a co-worker at Starbucks or a neighbor. “I can say...Jocelyn Kirsch had allegedly stolen another credit card and made additional purchases.”

Commit the same crime you were already arrested for, while you're out on bail and awaiting sentencing. Yeah, that should convince the judge to be lenient.

This was posted yesterday on one of the hockey boards I frequent. I have one question... WHY would a person go through the trouble of installing a FAKE seat belt in his car, instead of just wearing the REAL ONE? Now this poor guy's a Darwin Award candidate, when he might still be here if he'd just obeyed the darned seat belt laws.

Fake seat belt to fool police causes death of New Zealand driver
The Associated Press
Published: February 22, 2008

WELLINGTON, New Zealand: A New Zealand driver who used a fake car seat belt to fool police was killed when it failed him in a head-on crash, local media reported Saturday.

Ivan Segedin refused to wear a seat belt while driving and had been fined 32 times in the past five years for not wearing one, a coroner's court heard Friday.

Segedin, 39, died in a crash on July 22 last year from multiple injuries when his car crossed the road and collided head-on with an oncoming vehicle on North Island, coroner Carla na Nagara said.

"Ultimately Mr. Segedin's actions in driving without a seat belt have cost him his life in an accident that he may well have survived had he worn one," the New Plymouth Daily News quoted her saying.

Though his car was fitted with seat belts, an extra belt with a long strap had been knotted above the seat belt on the driver's side, providing a belt to simply sit over the driver's shoulder, Nagara said.

This created the illusion to a passing motorist or police officer that a seat belt was being worn when it was not.

Segedin's fatal injuries were caused when he was thrown forward on to the steering wheel in a low-impact crash. No blame or responsibility for the crash rested on the other driver, Nagara noted.

The latest from the Evil Non-Genius files:

Man Tries to Cash $36 Billion Check

Texan tries to cash $360bn cheque

The 10 zeros proved to be a stumbling block



A man in the US state of Texas has been arrested for allegedly trying to cash a cheque for $360bn (£182bn).

Charles Ray Fuller had said he wanted to start a record business, authorities in the state said.

The 21-year-old's attempt to cash the money in a bank in Fort Worth failed when staff spotted the 10 zeros on the personal cheque.

Mr Fuller was arrested on a charge of forgery and was released on bail of $3,750 (£1,900).

$1m scams

The man from North Texas said he had been given the cheque by his girlfriend's mother.

The bank said it had contacted the account owner and had been told she had not given Mr Fuller permission to either take or cash the cheque.

Fort Worth police said Mr Fuller also faced charges of unlawfully carrying a weapon and possessing cannabis.

Officers said a small amount of cannabis and a .25-calibre pistol were found in his pocket.

In October last year a man in the city of Pittsburgh was arrested after he handed over a counterfeit $1m bill to a cashier at a supermarket and asked for change.

Three years earlier a woman was arrested after trying to use a fake $1m bill at a supermarket in Georgia.

How's this for a bargain? In this story, we get three Einsteins for the price of one! There's nothing like the special combination of greedy, dishonest, and DUMB AS A BOX OF ROCKS to make the other convicts in jail point and laugh when the offender walks by.

I found another candidate for the Stupid Criminal Tricks file.

Seems that an employee who saw a "help wanted" ad, and thought that it meant she was about to be fired, deleted $2.5 million worth of her company's data.

Paranoia strikes deep

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco → More by this author

Published Thursday 24th January 2008 19:14 GMT

A Florida woman who believed she was about to get fired has been accused of deleting $2.5m worth of computer files to seek revenge on her employer.

Jacksonville Sheriff's officials say Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, used her own account credentials to access the server of Steven E. Hutchins Architects and delete seven years' worth of drawings. The firm's alarm company said someone entered the premises at 11 p.m. on Sunday and was there for about four hours.

Cooley went on her silent rampage after finding a help-wanted ad placed by her boss. It described an open administrative assistant position that sounded remarkably similar to hers.

"She decided to go and mess up everything for everybody," a spokesman for the sheriff's office told FirstCoast News here. "She decided to be spiteful and go in and sabotage the records. And she did a very good job of that."

Firm owner Steven Hutchins said he was able to recover the files. "It was not a sensationalistic amount of money," he told El Reg, referring to the fee he paid a consultant to dredge up the discarded architectural drawings. He declined to say if he had stored backups of the files, which were valued at $2.5m.

Cooley was charged with damage in excess of $1,000 to computers and was released on bail.

As it turned out, the help-wanted ad listed a position available in the office of Hutchins's wife. Cooley's job was never under threat, though it probably is now. ®

My first thought was, "What happened to maintaining backups? What happened to maintaining OFFSITE backups?" I mean, if it had been a case of the building burning down or the Hardware Failure from H*ll, instead of corporate sabotage, those files could very well have been lost without anyone's malicious action causing the damage. Heck, last time I checked, Mother Nature has a tendency to visit Florida with hurricanes and other assorted severe weather. That right there should be enough to inspire a company to maintain an OFFSITE backup of all data -- so in case the building where their computer resides suffers catastrophic damage, and their computer system takes a hit as a result, their offsite backup will allow them to start over with a minimal amount of aggravation. Obtain new computer, load offsite-backup contents onto it, and restart operations with little or no data loss.

So if the company's backup process is lacking, responsibility for that part of the company's woes lies squarely on their IT department's policies.

HOWEVER, by no means do I blame the victim here. Regardless of WHAT their company's backup procedures are, it doesn't excuse the (probably soon-to-be-ex-)employee's taking malicious action. Corporate sabotage is illegal, last time I checked, so if the company throws the book at this person, she brought it on herself. Hence, her actions are the Stupid Criminal Tricks for today.

Wasn't it St. James who wrote that the tongue is the most dangerous part of the body? He wasn't kidding! And he offered this observation a couple of millenia prior to the existence of Youtube.

There are some gang members who most likely wish they'd had a reminder of that bit of Scripture before they posted a video on Youtube, showing themselves wielding an assault rifle and threatening police.

Unsurprisingly, the police were less than delighted about this. Long story short: the two individuals in the video have been arrested, and two computers and firearms have been seized. Besides being charged with making threats against police, one of these individuals could be convicted of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, which carries a sentence of 15 to 30 years in Florida State Prison.

15 to 30 years. All because someone thought that posting a nastygram on Youtube was a good idea. St. James was right.

More for the Stupid Criminal Tricks file. I swear, if there an award distributed for idiotic crooks, these guys would win it... and if they didn't win, I would like to see the numbwit that outdid them. Here go a couple of guys who watched the Weekend at Bernie's movies a few too many times, and tried to make Life Imitate Farce.

Two in Hell's Kitchen bring dead man on trip to cash his Social Security check

Two in Hell's Kitchen bring dead man on trip to cash his Social Security check

BY EDGAR SANDOVAL, ALISON GENDAR and ETHAN ROUEN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Wednesday, January 9th 2008, 4:00 AM

Murray/News

Two men are accused of using Virgilio Cintron's corpse in a scheme to cash his check.

Life imitated the movies Tuesday when two dopes wheeled a dead man around Hell's Kitchen in an office chair as they tried to cash his Social Security check, cops said.

The "Weekend at Bernie's" stunt was an attempt to collect 66-year-old Virgilio Cintron's dough less than a day after he died, police said. One suspect is Cintron's roommate.

"They didn't kill the guy. He died of natural causes. But they were all about not letting the situation go to waste," a police source said. "'How are we going to cash it? Let's bring him with us.' They must watch too many movies."

The roommate, James O'Hare, and his pal David Dalaia attempted to dress Cintron's corpse in a pair of pants, a T-shirt and sneakers, police said. When they couldn't get the pants to his waist, the 65-year-old men threw a jacket over his crotch and wheeled him from his W.52nd St. apartment to a check-cashing outlet around the block on Ninth Ave., police said.

"Witnesses observed Mr. Cintron flopping from side to side and these individuals propping him up as they rolled along," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

The men left Cintron's body outside while they went into Pay-O-Matic, where Cintron always cashed his checks, police said.

An employee recognized the name on the $355 check, and when he asked to see Cintron, O'Hare said, "He's outside. We'll get him," according to police.

"They were trying to pass the guy off as alive," Pay-O-Matic clerk Mariano Galvez told the Daily News. "They just left the body in the chair outside."

The casual corpse on the sidewalk at 3:45p.m. drew a large crowd, including an on-duty detective who was eating lunch at a restaurant next-door. He reported the incident and called the Emergency Medical Service.

As O'Hare went to get Cintron, an ambulance arrived to cart his remains off to the morgue, police said. Moments later, O'Hare and Dalaia were taken to the Midtown North stationhouse, where last night police were preparing to charge them with check fraud.

A neighbor of the roommates, Jeff Bell, 51, said the pair had lived together for years and that Cintron had Alzheimer's disease.

In 1989's "Bernie" flick, two young pals cart their dead boss around, successfully passing him off as alive.

I'm going to be laughing about this one for a while, for sure.

It's 5:19 AM... have you been asleep yet today? If you have, that makes one of us. The headcold that Joe M. was battling all last week, and which Mark picked up over the weekend, has made its way to me. At the moment, I have a stupendous earache, and I am so congested that I can't breathe unless I'm sitting up. Phooey on headcolds. Though at least this one was polite enough to wait until AFTER Christmas and New Year in order to arrive.

The good news: my new cell phone arrived yesterday. My two-year contract was up for renewal, so I took advantage of the "New Every Two" equipment discount that my carrier offers. There was also a discount for ordering online, and a discount for renewing my contract online... and, to my surprise, when the phone arrived it came with a form for a mail-in rebate. Wow. They are going out of their way to offer attractive deals on their hardware -- AND the phone plan now comes with unlimited text/picture messaging, regardless of what carrier they're being sent to or from. Good.

The good news took some of the sting out of the bad news, which is that my XO is having some keyboard issues. Some people are reporting that the ALT key or the CTRL key get "stuck". I had seen the posts on the XO forum a while ago, so I knew right where to look for information when my own ALT key started acting up yesterday. I may need to get an RMA number and send it to them so they can make whatever adjustment needs to be made... but PHOOEY. I was learning a bunch of stuff about Linux until this freaking issue cropped up. Now I might have to put those lessons on hold for a while. I don't WANT to put the lessons on hold. ::sulk sulk sulk:: Freaking pain-in-my-rump Gremlins! I'd like to send the Gremlins, AND this headcold, straight back to wherever it is that they came from.

Oh, well. It's certainly not the end of the world. But the Gremlins must have missed my post where I declared that 2008 is MY YEAR. By my count, they've come to the wrong address and they're supposed to be irking some other person right about now. Just what I need... Gremlins that can't read. Phooey.

Anyway... since lying down and breathing are currently mutually exclusive activities for me, I chose breathing and I'm sitting up and reading news stories online. One link led to another, and the end result is that we have a couple of competitors for the Stupid Criminal Tricks award:

Teacher Steals and Ebays Student's Jacket

Man Caught Ebaying Stolen Goods from Work

How dishonest, how greedy, and how FOOLISH does a person have to be to do that? Good, I'm glad they were caught. It gives me something upbeat to think about while I'm trying not to sneeze my head off.

In other news, Captain and Stanley are in for a rude awakening today. Mark is going back to work after being on vacation for over a week. The Stripe Committee has absolutely LOVED having both Meowmy *and* Paw at home every day. I suspect there'll be a couple of Velcro Kitties around here shortly. They'll probably be following ME around when Mark's out, and they'll surely be following HIM around when he comes back. :o)

The latest installment of Stupid Criminal Tricks:

Would-be identity thief finds himself stumped without printer drivers

By Jacqui Cheng | Published: October 23, 2007 - 11:35AM CT

There are a few things in this world that thieves need to keep in mind in order to run a successful criminal operation. For example, don't take the cash you just stole from one bank to another bank down the street to have it deposited into your account. Don't steal someone's MacBook and take it to the Apple Store Genius Bar the next day to get help with OS X. And finally, don't steal a drivers' license printer from the DMV, only to call up the manufacturer the next day looking for drivers. That's one tip that 33-year-old Missouri resident Timothy Scott Short apparently wasn't aware of when he stole some equipment from the Missouri Department of Revenue earlier this month, only to find himself facing jail time after outing himself to tech support.

Short stole the Digimarc printer, along with a PC containing names and birthdates, from the Department of Revenue's contract office in St. Charles. Unfortunately for Short, the PC was locked, and he was unable to access anything on it, department director Trish Vincent told IDG. But without the software installed on the PC, the printer was essentially useless. Think of the millions of fake IDs that could be created on that thing!

Short apparently couldn't stop thinking about it, as he broke down and called Digimarc for support—twice—a couple of days later asking whether he would be able to obtain printer drivers. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush told IDG that he recognized Short's voice on the recording from another, unrelated investigation and that the phone number that Short had provided matched up to another identity theft case. Here's another tip for thieves: don't use your regular phone number for all of your crimes. Get a business line or something.

Short was then tracked down a few days later and charged with possession of document-making implements with the intent to use them for fraud. He now faces a $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

HA HA HA... serves him right. Throw the book at Mr. Identity Thief.

OK, I'm a geek. I've never made any attempt to hide that fact. So the fact that I enjoyed trying a Zune feature, and sending a few pictures from my device to Joe M's Zune, should surprise no one. Hey, this kind of entertainment keeps nerds like me off the streets and out of trouble, so it's all good. ;o)

In other news, here's the Stupid Criminal Tricks installment for the day:

Thief Demands $185K Ransom for Cell Phone, Goes to Jail Instead

Posted Oct 18th 2007 4:21PM by Terrence O'Brien
Filed under: Cell Phones

Our thief didn't die, and therefore is not eligible for a Darwin award, but Randy-Jay Adolphos Jones is certainly someone who should be prevented from reproducing. The suspect indecently assaulted a Philadelphia woman as she exited her car in front of a friend's house in Lancaster County, PA around 1:00am. The woman squirmed free of her assailant's grasp but lost her purse -- with her cell phone in it -- to his grimy paws in the process.

Officer Jeff Gerhart arrived on the scene and got the woman to call her cell phone. Jones answered and demanded an absurd $185,000 ransom for the mobile phone. The woman quickly negotiated the ransom down to $200.

Jones agreed to meet the woman to collect his ransom and return the phone on a pedestrian walkway connected to Franklin and Marshall College. When Jones arrived on the scene, officers immediately surrounded him, guns drawn. The woman got her cell phone and her purse back and Jones is now in jail. During questioning Jones gave no explanation as to why he initially requested $185,000 for the return of the phone.

Bwahaha -- knucklehead! Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.