Dumb Criminals

In Pine Prairie, Louisiana, a thief attempted to rob an ATM on Monday by breaking it open with a piece of heavy construction equipment, ‘The Early Show’ reports — and the incident was caught on the store’s security camera.

Thieves who made off with a semitrailer near Vienna, Austria better have a lot of hot dogs. The trailer, parked in a lot and stolen over the weekend, contained 21 tons of ketchup and mustard.

For his 58th birthday, Florida resident James Taylor (no relation to the singer) drank 48 beers. Or at least that’s what he told the cops when they arrested him last week for causing a disturbance at Florida’s Hudson Beach.

There’s a reason men don’t like to ask for help. A prisoner who escaped from the Olympic Corrections Center in Washington State was captured Wednesday after he knocked on the door of a resort cabin in the woods, only to find out a guard who works at the facility was renting it.

It takes money to make money. That old adage applies even to those on the wrong side of the law. A robber in Fort Lauderdale, Florida had to buy a pack of gum in order to get a cash register to open when he tried to hold up a discount store earlier this month.

Hey, these are tough times, so even the boogeyman, long known for his work scaring little kids, has had to take a second job. A Florida man who crashed his motorcycle and is accused of being drunk at the time told police the boogeyman was responsible for the crash.

Some women carry gum or mints in their purse. Marie Chester carries dinner for a big family. Police in Fort Pierce, Florida arrested the 40-year-old woman last week for shoplifting six full racks of ribs and two packs of oxtails from a supermarket. Somehow, she carried out the food in her pocketbook. The items she took were worth $57.60.

A New York man now faces a whopping $50,000 bail after police said he tried to rob a convenience store of 99 cents. Christopher Tisley, a 34-year-old Brooklyn resident, sauntered into the store at about 3 a.m. on Saturday with a gun and ordered the clerk to hand over the change, according to police.

The high price of gas seems to have gotten to Karleena Kempf. Police in Galesburg, Illinois arrested the 35-year-old woman Saturday on charges of stealing gas from the same service station on eight different occasions between May 19 and June 10.

Aaron Vera Morales is definitely more Vera than Aaron. Prosecutors in Mexico City say Vera Morales underwent plastic surgery to appear as a woman so he could elude police who were trying to arrest him.

Getting a conviction is in the bag. That may be what prosecutors in Spain are thinking after a man was arrested for theft by worming his body into a suitcase that was loaded onto an airport bus just so he could squeeze back out and steal from other luggage.

Drinking can cloud your thinking, which may explain why a Farmington, Connecticut man came up with a pretty boneheaded idea. Authorities say Daniel Vagnini beat himself up to prove to police he had been assaulted to get out of being charged with drunken driving last Saturday.