You've got your burglary tools. You've got a blueprint of the target. You've even got a rock solid alibi who is willing to lie under oath that they saw you somewhere else at the time of the crime, but did you remember to pack the most important tool of any high society crime i.e. your brain? These brainless idiots didn't.
1.) The Great Train Robbery Gang Robbers The word “great” has long been associated with this infamous 1963 heist of nearly 2.3 million pounds, but the “great” part only refers to the heist itself and not the “not-so-great” things the robbers did with the money after they lifted it. Then again, the “Not-So-Great Train Robbery” really doesn’t look as good on a movie poster. The men behind the infamous heist celebrated their massive loot by playing a game of Monopoly using the money they had stolen in place of the proper fake money that came with the game. When a nearby resident alerted police to the suspicious activity in the barn where they hid out, police found the Monopoly game and extracted several fingerprints from it that led to their inevitable captures. [BBC]
2.) The Newton Boys' Train Robbery These infamous band of bank and train robbing brothers had set their greedy eyes really high when it came to knocking over banks and money transports for their personal gain. They were also pretty good at it too, until they panicked and got caught. During their famous 1924 robbery of a money train that netted them more than $3 million in cash, one of the gang members accidentally shot Willis Newton during the heist. One of the hostages heard the gang called the wounded “Willie” and police found him being cared for in a home just outside of Illinois. The rest of the gang panicked and took off in the hopes they could elude the authorities and Jesse found himself in a drunken stupor in Mexico where he buried his share of the money. The only problem is he forgot where he buried it and it was never found since a federal agent met him at the border. [Legends of America]
3.) The Dunbar Armored Car Robbers Sometimes all it takes is a tiny, almost microscopic scrap of evidence to unravel the most careful of plans. In this case, they couldn't have been dumber if they left the rental truck receipt for the getaway car at the scene of the crime. One of the biggest armed robberies in American history would have become the most successful and profitable robberies if the men behind the 1997 Dunbar armored car holdup in Los Angeles hadn’t left behind a piece of the U-Haul van they rented to carry the $18.9 million they stole at gunpoint. The piece of the broken tail light left at the loading dock led police to the rental agency where they picked up the vehicle just moments before the robbery and that not only gave them their identities, but also their addresses, phone numbers and even their personal identification. [Associated Press]
4.) The Belagio Casino Robber This crime draws a lot of rather easy comparisons to the heist pulled by the boys of the popular caper film Ocean’s 11 and that’s really not fair. Not only did the fake movie thieves get away with their crime, but they also had the good sense to keep their mouths shut. The producers behind the film who thought it needed two more sequels is another matter entirely. Anthony Carleo could have scored one of the biggest casino hit jobs in Las Vegas history when he took more than $1.5 million in chips from the Belagio Casino. His greed and bravado got the best of him. He actually went back to the casino and gambled away more than $100,000 of the chips he stole and he bragged about the crime to anyone would listen or at least had a competent sense of hearing. He even told his plan to a poker dealer three days before the robbery, a dealer who worked for the very casino he was about to rob. [Las Vegas Journal-Review]
5.) The Florida Yacht Caper Child actors are often portrayed as lost souls who feel cheated by the industry that spawned and rejected them and need to exact their revenge against the society that no longer loves them by committing a felony or two. And normally, that would be true if 99.99999 percent of them didn't perpetuate it by doing exactly that when they became adults. Brad Renfro, the deceased movie child star of Apt Pupil and The Client, tried to steal a yacht with a friend worth over $175,000 parked in a Fort Lauderdale dock just days before he was scheduled to shoot another movie. Their plot was foiled when they forgot to untie the big boat from the dock and as they hit the gas pedal (or whatever the boat’s equivalent is to a gas pedal), the boat lurched forward, then swung back and crashed into the dock. Some witnesses dragged them off the boat and held them down until police arrived. [ABC News]
6.) The Knightsbridge Safe Deposit Robbery Ringleader The poet Maya Angelou once said, “There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.” If that’s the case, meet the world’s worst metaphorical tightrope walker. Viccei was a lifelong luster for women, money and power. He modeled himself after Al Pacino’sScarface who would make a perfect role model if your goal is to become completely out of touch with reality and sloppy with details. More than anything, he wanted to be known as the mastermind of the world’s biggest robbery and he got his wish in 1987 in London where he organized the $40 million pound Knightsbridge safe deposit caper, a heist that took meticulous planning and precision cunning to achieve. Shortly after the caper, he fled the country to Colombia and would have gotten away with it if he just stayed put. Instead, he stayed in London to make plans to bring his beloved Ferrari Testerosa with him. They not only arrested him but also his girlfriend and all but two members of his gang. [“The World’s Greatest True Crime” on Google Books]
7.) The Other Belagio Casino Robbery Casino may be one of the most heavily guarded and secure casinos in the whole of human existence, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to beat the house. It helps if you aren't that intelligent in the first place. The first mastermind behind the Belagio robbery actually had a fairly successful 10-year spree of knocking over casinos such as the MGM Grand and the Desert Inn. In 2000, however, his attempt to steal $1.5 million from the Belagio resulted in his arrest after he failed to adequately disguise himself from the casino’s many high-tech security cameras. When he knocked off the Belagio, he only wore a baseball cap and sunglasses to protect his identity and just about every camera he walked in front of gave security and police a clear enough identity to broadcast on local Las Vegas stations for four days straight until his inevitable arrest. [The Daily Mail]
8.) The Antwerp Diamond Heist One of the dumbest things any crook, whether they use a gun or wonky accounting to get what they want, can do to get caught is leave a trial for the authorities to find. The gang who committed this high priced diamond heist couldn't have left a clearer trail if they used actually breadcrumbs. The thieves who broke into a vault in Antwerp in 2003 on Valentine’s Day weekend actually went to a great deal of detail to get the loot quickly and confuse the authorities once they fled the scene. They would have gotten away with $100 million in diamonds if they had left an actual paper trail that brought authorities to their doorstep. As they fled the scene, they accidentally dumped loads of incriminated garbage in a wooden area in Belgium that was being regularly patrolled for litterbugs. The garbage contained incriminating details such as receipts for surveillance equipment, business cards for security consultants and even a few loose diamonds. [Wired]
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