Movies can make difficult things look easy, but don’t be fooled, that often doesn’t
translate well when you try it in real life.
Take daring elaborate robberies we all love watching on screen for example: very very
few criminals can actually pull off a crime that smoothly.
Most just end up like the people on this list.
Ready to see them?
Let’s get it on!
Encountering an armed gang of bike riding jewel thieves smashing into your store with
sledgehammers has got to be a terrifying moment.
These people probably wished they had a huge bodyguard to help them, but all they actually
needed was this 71-year-old gran with a handbag.
She’s genuinely like a superhero, taking on a whole gang of huge armed men with no
protection at all.
And she turned out to be seriously effective, 5 of the thieves were caught and one fell
off his bike in fear, which is a bonus point.
And they were all filmed, so they can’t even lie about who took them down.
These guys looked like they had the right “all guns blazing” approach to robbery
that would mean they could get away with the ATM they were stealing, but all they really
managed to do was back their truck through a glass door.
Then one of them locked themself out of the truck, there was a lot of driving backward
and forward, and they got away with only the front panel of the machine and none of the
money.
After all that fumbling, the initially bold approach doesn’t really have the same impact.
If you’re going to be a horrible human being and commit a horrible crime like hitting someone
over the head with a rock and running away with their stuff, you better avoid doing anything
that people can make fun of you for.
The cops and their dogs cornered the man while he climbed back over the spiked fence at their
request, but I bet he intended to make a run for it.
Luckily, he couldn’t, because he got his jeans caught on the fence and had no choice
but to make the cops’ lives easy and hang around until he was arrested.
Rule number one when pulling off a bank job is to avoid anything that might identify you
- some robbers even make sure to disguise their voice.
This guy has obviously never seen a movie because he showed up with a uniquely branded
truck to steal this ATM.
He also looked straight at the camera, couldn’t break into the building, and then forgot to
actually attach the chain he’d put around the ATM to the truck to pull it out.
It’s so badly executed I’m not even sure he can be charged with a crime.
This wannabe thief needs to get hold of this CCTV footage because he might not be any good
at stealing, but he could get cast as the next great slapstick star.
This whole mini-play is just perfect.
First, he walks in front of the cameras, then thinks he can step back and nobody will be
able to recognise him because he’s put a stocking over his head - which he produced
by magic.
Then he throws something at the window, it doesn’t break, so he panics and falls over
again and again!
It’s an absolute classic if ever I saw one.
You would think that people are aware that there’s always a camera on them wherever
they go, but obviously not.
After all, if this guy knew there was a camera watching him, would he have thought it was
a good idea to dance this badly on someone’s porch?
Probably not.
Then again, maybe he did realise he was being watched and that’s why he decided to just
steal the packages as well, even though the price of his car clearly shows he doesn’t
need to steal - after all, in for a penny…
Stealing $7 million worth of jewellery isn’t easy - it requires a lot of preparation, perfect
execution, and perfect acting skills.
This woman didn’t have any of those things.
Instead, she entered this jewellery store and pretty much instantly gave herself away
by acting all nervous and shaking.
Then she performed a poorly executed switch of the envelope with the jewels in it, and
the owner promptly locked her in the store vault while police were called.
All she could do after that was panic on her own in the vault before getting arrested,
making this the least impressive diamond heist of all time.
One of the first rules of pulling off a successful crime is to choose your target wisely.
With that in mind, this guy obviously isn’t the most successful criminal.
Frankly, he couldn’t have picked a worse target.
He must’ve thought he was safe because he was stealing from a girl, but this girl just
happened to be a martial arts instructor.
He realised his mistake pretty quickly though - mainly because she had her arm around his
neck before he’d even realised what happened.
She got her phone back obviously, and he was lucky that she took mercy on him and didn’t
use him as a punching bag.
You might remember something similar to this from school: maybe a teacher caught someone
passing notes and the kid opted to eat the paper rather than hand it over.
Well this is almost like that, but this thief was swallowing a diamond ring instead of paper.
He clearly panicked when he realised he was locked in the store holding a $3,500 stolen
ring.
Swallowing it didn’t help him though: X-rays exist these days.
It would’ve saved a lot of trouble if he’d just handed it over, because all swallowing
it got him was an extra charge for falsifying evidence and an embarrassing encounter with
police when they retrieved the ring.
Criminals who get away with their crimes know that it’s always in their own interest to
commit those crimes in places that are familiar to them.
This shoplifter is here to demonstrate why that principle holds true.
He’s stolen whatever it is that he wanted and made a run for it, but he’s in a mall
that he’s not familiar with.
Unfortunately, the part he’s not familiar with is how the door works.
One creative but surefire way to get yourself caught is to run straight into a window and
concuss yourself.
He knows that now.
In Singapore, residents leave their shoes in racks outside their apartment.
That seems foreign to us, but it’s just normal there, so they don’t expect opportunistic
criminals to use the racks for free shopping sprees, but that’s exactly what these girls
decided to do, but they clearly haven’t cased the joint as proper criminals say.
They make a run for it when one hears a noise, but it’s not over - a few minutes later,
one girl’s back, checking if it’s safe for her friend to come over.
It takes her an embarrassingly long time to notice the camera - bit late to cover your
face now!
If you’re robbing someone, people already dislike you so preparation is key - after
all, you don’t want to make a mistake that will give all those people who don’t like
you a reason to mock you.
Like let’s say, you forget your mask and have to wear a bucket on your head instead.
That’s the perfect kind of idiot move for people to have a good laugh at.
So it’s a good thing we all have this thieving bucket head or we would’ve had one less
thing to laugh about today.
There’s criminal behaviour, and then there are signs that someone’s seriously messed
up.
In this case, I’m not talking about this man’s choice of costume for executing this
robbery, or his brazen selection of the items he wanted to steal, or even the fact that
he was stealing from a charity.
This man’s real crime is that he left a half-eaten donut on the counter.
What kind of madman leaves a donut midway through?
I’ve never witnessed such a terrible crime pulled off without any attempt by the criminal
to hide their identity from the frankly huge number of cameras.
Criminals usually opt for lightweight latex masks when stealing from someone, so a huge
mascot-style Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer mask is clearly a bold choice.
This robbery of an animal feed business did happen just before Christmas though, so it
was very festive.
But it turns out there’s a reason for the usual choice of mask, because this burglar
quickly got annoyed by her huge Reindeer head and took it off.
Then she looked straight at the security camera.
Theft isn’t really in the festive spirit anyway, she could’ve lost the costume and
made her life so much easier.
Sometimes it pays to take a step back and think outside the box.
After all, for every robber in the movies, there’s a crafty cop hot on their
heels.
A store owner was tired of getting broken into, so
he decided to design a trap worthy of any Hollywood script.
The would be burglar is funnelled into a room and trapped.
Pick a door, any door – it doesn’t matter, because none of them can
be opened!
As the door closes behind him, you get a real sense of his panic.
No matter what he tries he’s trapped – just like a rat in
a cage.
He batters the doors for an hour, breaking his
hammer in the process, before police finally arrive.
Luckily the store owner was kind enough to leave a tap in the trap room – trying to
escape is thirsty work.
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