The World's Dumbest Criminals

Crime never pays —especially if it’s planned badly.

- Bruce Grierson

ILLEGAL BRIEFS Early one morning a woman in Bridgend, Wales discovered a burglar rummaging through her downstairs cupboards. The startled robber fled—but not before the homeowner caught a glimpse, revealed as he bent over, of his strange underpants.

The quirky boxers would prove the thief’s undoing.

Darren Machon, 39, was already wanted by police and was arrested after a car chase in the town centre later that day. The suspect was changing his clothes in the holding cell when one of the officers noticed his undies, adorned with cartoon graphics of burgers, donuts and fries; the same fast-food medley that the burglary victim had described her intruder as wearing.

Machon’s “novelty underpants” were held up as evidence against him in Cardiff Crown Court in last August. He was sentenced to two years and ten months for burglary and dangerous driving.

BIG RISK, NO REWARD 

Two men withdrew money from a roadside filling station bank machine the hard way in Stockport, England: They pumped explosive gas into the ATM and exploded it. The pair of crooks managed to scoop roughly 25,000 pounds sterling out of the machine, and fled.

When police arrived at the scene, they found the partially destroyed ATM. But, as if leaving a tip, the thieves had spilled some of their stash as they drove away. The trail of bank notes led police directly to their hideout beneath a sign-bearing highway gantry. Dangling above the motorway, the frightened crooks were almost relieved to be arrested before they fell into traffic. They pled guilty to theft and “causing an explosion likely to endanger life” and were sentenced to a total of 15 and a half years.