These criminals are all special for one particular reason: They went to ridiculous measures to
pull off their crimes.
Each case is different and weird in its own way, but they all have something in common:
Guts.
The 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist in Boston began with a criminal duo disguised
as cops.
A simple idea like that was enough to fool everyone and make for the biggest art heist
in history.
The fake policemen managed to be convincing enough to make a museum guard walk away from
his station and away from the alarm that he should have pressed.
The still unidentified pair stole 13 works worth $500 million by artists such as Degas,
Rembrandt, and Manet.
Anthony Amore, the Gardner Museum's current director of security, told Boston Magazine,
"People say this was so elaborate.
It's not elaborate!
It was kind of a flimsy plan that worked."
Perhaps that's what makes this crime so impressive.
Despite their "flimsy plan," these thieves have still evaded capture.
In 2008, four men were able to pull off an enormous jewelry heist at Harry Winston's
in Paris by crossdressing.
Three out of the four criminals masqueraded as posh females.
They wore dresses, scarves, sunglasses, and blonde wigs, while the fourth man strolled
alongside them into the store.
But they weren't very ladylike was when they started pulling out hand grenades and revolvers
and breaking glass cases to get their mitts on the jewels.
The group exited the building with over $100 million worth of valuables.
It took several years, but in 2015, eight men were arrested in connection with this
heist and others that had occurred at Winston's.
However, despite the arrests, law enforcers still haven't found the majority of the stolen
loot.
If you've watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, you'll remember that one of
the pirate lords was a scary woman by the name of Mistress Ching.
What you might not have known is that she was based on a real pirate.
Her name is spelled in many ways in English, but one version she's known by is "Madame
Cheng."
She started out as a prostitute, but she soon became the wife of Cheng I, who presided over
the biggest pirate army in history.
When he died in 1807, Madame Cheng took over and became even more notorious.
She had strict command of all of the South China Sea and decapitated anyone who disobeyed
her orders.
The Chinese emperor couldn't defeat her in battle, so instead, the government sought
to subdue her with a full pardon.
At first, she declined, but later, she approached the governor of Canton with a renegotiated
deal.
She agreed to give up her ships so that she and most of her crew could walk away with
full pardons and also keep the valuables they'd taken.
To add insult to the government's injury, she then opened up an opium den, a gambling
house, and a brothel.
Sometimes, it's not about what happens when you commit a crime that's most interesting
but what happens after.
A perfect example of this is Tony Carleo robbing the famous Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas in
2010.
Leaving his motorcycle parked outside, Carleo entered the casino with little besides a gun
and a bike helmet to cover his face.
Once he zeroed in on a table, it was just a few moments before he swooped in and took
what turned out to be $1.5 million in chips.
Pulling off a casino robbery of that magnitude was crazy enough.
But Carleo was going to prove how gutsy he could be the very next day when he re-entered
the same casino in plain clothes, this time unmasked.
He managed to walk freely about the building and even checked himself into a hotel room.
He upped the ante even more when he repeatedly went down to the casino and played at the
same table he'd robbed, each time slyly cashing in part of his stolen chips for cash.
After briefly living the glamorous millionaire lifestyle, Carleo was finally caught by FBI
agents thanks to a dealer who was paying close attention.
He had hosted the then-broke Carleo at his table right before the robbery, and he noticed
that when the same man came back days later, his luck had suddenly turned around.
Carleo received a nine-year sentence, but not before he made the ultimate gamble by
hiding in plain sight, a gamble he lost.
They call it the Collar Bomb Heist, and it was the worst scavenger hunt ever.
In 2003, a pizza delivery guy was conned into a bank robbery scheme that ended up taking
his life.
His name was Brian Wells, and he had a bomb hanging from his neck.
His first order was to steal $250,000 from a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania.
After he left the bank with only a small portion of what he asked for, cops caught up to him,
and he insisted that none of this was his idea.
But before the bomb squad could arrive on the scene, Wells's death trap went off, killing
him on the spot.
The police were left with a series of clues leading them all over town.
They chased these clues but got no answers from them.
They then received strange tips that led them on a hunt for the mastermind behind this whole
ordeal.
Blame was placed on several people, all pointing fingers at one another and claiming they knew
about the robbery but didn't take part in it.
In the end, a woman named Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison.
Others involved received reduced but still lengthy sentences.
It was also revealed that Wells was actually in on the plot, he just didn't think he was
wearing a real bomb.
However, while it seems like all loose ends were tied on this case, one man believes the
justice system got it all wrong.
"Marjorie was never going to tell the truth which is why questions about FBI major case
number 203 will go unanswered."
According to Wired, Jim Fisher, a retired FBI agent, began to obsess over the crime.
He believes that one of Diehl-Armstrong's conspirators, the late Bill Rothstein, was
the man behind it all.
Fisher believes that Rothstein, who died before ever receiving a conviction, put this whole
scheme together just for the thrill of frustrating the cops with his complex riddles.