In a heist that was probably narrated by Morgan Freeman, a determined Tennessee man is accused of tunneling into a GameStop in order to pilfer its sweet, unguarded wares in the dark of night.
The Greeneville Sun reports the man made off with $288.55 in cash and $5,342 in merch.
Police arrested the suspect, saying he “forcibly removed the metal back door to an adjacent vacant rental space,” before cutting through the sheet rock wall and entering the store. The man wore a ski mask in order to keep things discreet.
It might have been the perfect plan, except for the fact that he lacked an inconspicuous getaway car. Police easily spotted his passion purple SUV, which was scoped out by security cameras from a nearby Walmart.
Chuckey Man Arrested In Tunneling Break-In [The Greeneville Sun via Switched]
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Confused on the $288.55 in cash part.
Previously when working at an EB Games (now Gamestop) the policy was to leave $150 in each drawer and the rest went into the deposit bag. Did he leave some $ behind?
Only thing I can think of is that was the amount of the deposit. Must have been a slow day there
During my time in retail, I noticed that most people pay primarily using cards instead of cash, especially for purchases over $30. But that’s just my personal experience, and it wasn’t in a place that bought/sold video games.
How much of that was usually coins? With something as fast as this I could see just dumping out the drawers and not worrying about the odd bills or change that you miss.
hahah passion purple suv.
Was he using SSH?
*Would upvote if this was reddit*
>en
#conf t
(config)#line vty 0 4
(config-line)#login local
(config-line)#transport input telnet ssh
(config-line)#username dipshit password passion_purple
(config)#ip domain-name freegames4u.com
(config)#crypto key generate rsa
The name of the key will be R2.freegames4u.com
Choose the size of the key modulus greater than 512 may take a few minutes.
How many bits in modulus[512]:512
% Generating 512 bit RSA keys, keys will be non-exportable…[OK]
Jan-19 11:38:33: %SSH-5-ENABLED: SSH 1.99 has been enabled
(config)#end
#copy running-config startup-config
all set up… next time it should go much smoother.
OK, which one of us is geekier – you for writing that, or me for understanding each line and laughing at it?
He almost thought of everything.
You know, after my Borders store was robbed, and the police made a report, I realized just how easy this is to get away with sans tunnel. In that case, a guy in a ski mask simply smashed the front door glass with a trash can we’d conveniently left nearby for that same purpose. He walked in, unfurled a hefty, and started just shoveling DVDs off the shelves into his crime bag. He was in and out in about 90 seconds. Our estimate was a little over 2K in merch. Best part, on the video, he pauses near the checkout and then swipes a Burt’s Bees display. I assume so he would have gifts for his crime wife and crime kids.
I found the event you described amusing, though I do disapprove of theft.
You know once my grandmother told me of when she birthed a crime kid. Back then it wasn’t looked down upon to drown them in the river.
Can’t let those crime kids get the upper hand.
Aww and here I was thinking he’d actually dug a tunnel and come up from underneath the store. That would have been much cooler
Thats what I was thinking as well.
That would make this story 100% more awesome. But shows why most people think they are safe in apartments or other places where you share a wall. Forget the front door, just kick in some drywall and there ya go.
Unless there is concrete between the walls like in our apt.
Good luck, you’ll break your foot since my apartment building was built before drywall became popular.
SAME!
“Diglett! I choose you!
DIGLETT used DIG!
“GO!Umbreon!”
UMBREON used THIEF!
It’s super effective!
Tunneling? Really? Not even close.
He broke the door off the neighboring suite and busted a hold in the drywall. He didn’t tunnel through anything, unless the drywall was like 2 feet thick.
Phil’s articles are getting worse by the day. I almost wonder if he’s doing it just to get a rise out of people.
Right, because Phil originated the “tunnel” appellation for this story.
Reading the article before posting it on the site would be a good start to see that no ‘tunneling’ ever really happened.
Past that, what consumer related issue does this story raise or comment on? It’s nothing more than a report of breaking and entering.
This is not what this website used to be about.
The term appears frequently in the linked article and it fits the definition of tunnel: “To excavate, as a tunnel; to make (one’s way) by boring or excavating” (it’s a figurative use). As for the type of article posted on Consumerist, articles like these appeared often before Phil came on-board. This is nothing new and has always been the nature of the blog.
I would say he tunneled through the wall to get to the Gamestop. Just because it’s a tunnel doesn’t mean it went underground. That is just your preconceived notion on what happened.
Precisely.
I agree – you should leave in protest.
Yet, you posted multiple times in a story that you deem a waste of time. You even came back to the useless story to post some replies to your comments. Multiple visits to a story that you thought didn’t deserve one visit?
Perhaps you should stick with those stories you feel are deserving of being here and just, I don’t know, scroll past the others?
Did you not read the original article, titled “Chuckey Man Arrested In Tunneling Break-In”? Said article then mentions the criminal “tunneling” twice.
Every article I have seen on this mentions tunneling, also there is no width requirement on tunneling. Dictionary: to construct a passageway through or under. I don’t see any requirements about “must be at list 2 feet thick” his usage is correct. I could tunnel through my cube wall (although I would get fired and fined) even though it is only 2 inches thick.
He then traded in the games and got $38 in store credit.
Oh snap!
+1
*snort!*
Hahahahahaha! Comment of the day.
you made my day
Always leave it to the crooks to catch themselves. They are never that bright a bunch.
…Unlike his SUV. Passion Purple, indeed. Would that skew more towards ‘hot pink’?
Sure they are. You only hear about the stupid ones who get caught. There are thousands of unsolved burglaries every day in this country. Some of them get away for years. That is when you hear about it and the millions that they have stolen over the course of a couple years or even a few months in some cases. I’ve always been fascinated with these “perfect crimes”. They are only perfect when you don’t get caught.
If you come up with something clever and new, you’ll almost always get away with it once, especially if you’re acting alone.
It’s having partners or doing repeats that give the cops what they need to track you down.
Over the course of my 47 years, I’ve been mugged, had my car stripped, and had my house burglarized. Cops never caught any of them, so I’m 0-3 in the ‘stupid crooks ripped me off’ category. *grumble grumble*
This could have been awesome had he worn a Dig Dug costume.
+1
I just snorted water!
I wonder if he’ll use a similar method to escape lockup. That’d be kinda cool.
Next time borrow a Beige Camry. Theres bound to be one nearby for “borrowing.”
This has happened at several Seattle area GameStops as well, although the thief was never caught. It also happened at a Kay’s Jeweler in my local mall.
I knew a guy who did this in the barracks in the Army. He knocked a hole in the wall from next door to steal a guy’s stereo while he was out of town. The funniest part was when the guy returned, looked through the hole in the wall, and said, “What are yo doing with my stereo?”
As a former Airman I always heard stories about how dumb folks in the Army were, but I think that’s pretty bad even by Army standards.
I’m sure people could come up with better examples of soldiers doing dumb things. I knew of a Navy guy who stole something like a dozen Navy laptops. The moron took them straight to his room and had them all laid out on his bed when the chief came in to ask him about the laptops. You would think the guy would have been found guilty, but he got off because the chief’s visit to his room constituted an illegal search. I was amazed by this.
That would really be odd if the Seaman was living in base housing. It was made abundently clear to us that base housing was Gov’t property so there was no such thing as an illeagal search when it came to finding stolen property (much less stolen government property). The Sargent in charge of the barracks might get in trouble for walking in un-announced, but they didn’t have to ask permission to enter. Just had to make it known they were entering and give the occupant enough time to cover up if needed.
It was the barracks in this case. I’m not sure about your specific situation, but you don’t give up your rights to due process just because you live on-base. You may be subject to certain kinds of searches, but even in the barracks, you have some rights. I remember questioning the search methods myself on two separate occasions. The first time was in 1991 when two E-7s wanted to search my room and told me that if I didn’t comply, they would just hold me until they got permission from the CO. I let them search, they found “drugs” (my friend’s legal prescription), confiscated these harmless pills, and tried to get me on drug charges, which never even made it past a first lieutenant. The second time was in Korea. Some night vision goggles were missing (or so I was told) and my boss had to inspect “everybody.” I had a room to myself, but furniture for three. He finally gave up looking because it was taking too much time, even though he hadn’t searched sufficiently to find anything illegal if I’d even been barely trying to hide it. But still, in both cases, I don’t think either would have been legal.
hes still known to everyone on base as that guy who stole laptops. he may get off on a technicality but his pool of friends shrunk pretty drastically that day.
So…what happened at the court martial?
I don’t remember ever hearing the details. It might not have even made it to court martial. This was in Korea where really strange things happened.
>en
#conf t
(config)#line vty 0 4
(config-line)#login local
(config-line)#transport input telnet ssh
(config-line)#username dipshit password passion_purple
(config)#ip domain-name freegames4u.com
(config)#crypto key generate rsa
The name of the key will be R2.freegames4u.com
Choose the size of the key modulus greater than 512 may take a few minutes.
How many bits in modulus[512]:512
% Generating 512 bit RSA keys, keys will be non-exportable…[OK]
Jan-19 11:38:33: %SSH-5-ENABLED: SSH 1.99 has been enabled
(config)#end
#copy running-config startup-config
all set up… next time it should go much smoother.
huh…. that was supposed to be a reply… awesome!
This reminds me when some thieves broke into the CompUSA store I used to work for. They cut holes in the ceiling and managed to find the “upgrade center” location and steal every laptop and camera that was in the room. They must have been much better at this type of thing than this guy because Wal-Mart cameras did not catch them and neither did the Sam’s Club cameras which was quite a feat since this CompUSA was between both. They were even able to cover the motion sensor in the room so it never went off.