Dumb crooks, bungling crooks and unbelievably ill conceived crimes, this category has it all. It you enjoy seeing would-be crooks come a cropper (and who doesn’t) this one is for you.
WINNER: A Swedish man was arrested after he was caught trying to split atoms at his home and keeping a blog about it. Richard Handl had the radioactive elements radium, americium and uranium in his apartment and had spent months trying to split atoms in his kitchen. When he realised it might not be legal he sent a question to Sweden’s Radiation Authority and was answered by the arrival of police. (Yahoo)
RUNNER-UP: Primary school worker Alexis Bailey had just appeared in Highbury Magistrates Court charged with taking part in the UK riots/looting. But holding a newspaper over his face to hide his identity he proceeded to march straight into a lamppost. (YouTube)
22-year-old Ashley McDowell this year found out the hard way why you shouldn’t buy an iPad 2 in a McDonald’s car — she paid $180 for a piece of wood painted to look like an Apple device. When she got her new iPad 2 home, she opened the FedEx box she had been given and discovered it contained a piece of wood painted black with an Apple logo. (HuffPost)
Caius Veiovis undoubtedly appeared in the strangest mugshot of 2011. The 31-year-old has the number of the devil tattooed on his forehead, a spike through his nose and a series of facial horns. (NewsLite)
Wasting police time is almost as bad a committing a crime, which makes Michael Skopec a grade A crook — because when he couldn’t get his iPhone to work, he made a series of bizarre calls to 911. (NewsLite)
