It was clear that the man who drove into a Jack In The Box restaurant in Koreatown, Los Angeles, didn’t do it by accident. He backed up and rammed into the building a second time. There were around 20 to 25 customers in the store at the time, and no one was injured. The restaurant can be repaired, and the drive-thru is open. [More]
arrests
Siblings Arrested For Robbing Girl Scouts Of $200 In Cookie Money
By 3.4.16
Most people look at Girl Scouts selling cookies outside of a store and see children learning important lessons about commerce. Every year, though, there’s at least one person who looks at them and sees a big box of cash guarded by little girls. This cookie season, the first criminals accused of having this terrible idea were a brother and sister in Florida, who were arrested yesterday for running off with about $200 in cookie money last weekend. [More]
Woman Allegedly Instructs Kid To Push Cart Of Stolen Merchandise Out Of Walmart
By 9.9.15
Over the years, we’ve reported on several incidents in which a parent or guardian has taken their child along on a shoplifting excursion: there was the Toys ‘R’ Us shoplifting spree, the women who left their baby in the store, and the mom who used her kid’s stroller as cover for a stolen sex toy. While we haven’t heard too many of these stories lately, it’s still happening: a Chicago woman reportedly had a child accompanying her take stolen goods out of a Walmart. [More]
Customer Turned Down For Loan, Threatens Kia Dealership With Handgun
By 8.10.15
There are many ways to deal with the situation when you’re turned down for a car loan. You could, for example, try a different dealership, or apply for financing through your own bank or credit union first. We do not recommend the tactic that one man in Kansas took last week, which was to pull out a handgun and threaten Kia dealership employees with it. [More]
Iowa Taco Bell Closed For Decontamination Due To Meth Components In Utility Room
By 8.5.15
At least one Taco Bell employee may have been planning to cook more than Quesaritos inside the building, according to local police in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Police say that two men were responsible for the “active meth-making ingredients” found in a utility room at the restaurant, but don’t know for sure whether the men actually cooked any methamphetamine in their makeshift lab. [More]
Man Suspected Of Swapping iPods For Erasers At Target Caught, Arrested, Pleads Not Guilty
By 1.17.14
Remember the guy in California who gave his wife an iPod box filled with erasers for Christmas, but not intentionally? When he tried to exchange it for a box with a real iPod in it, the new box contained erasers, too. We publish a lot of stories like this, but here’s something unusual: a follow-up story with the arrest of the person behind the alleged eraser-swap. [More]
Man Without Cellphone Ticketed For Talking On Cellphone While Driving
By 3.7.12
We don’t have a problem with police officers enforcing laws that prohibit people from driving and talking on their cellphones at the same time. Where we draw the line is at the application of this law to a man who didn’t even have a cellphone in the car with him. [More]
Do Not Try To Deal Drugs From Your Cruise Ship Cabin
By 2.15.11
What won’t you find on a list of must-pack items for cruise vacations? Narcotics and incriminating wads of drug money. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say a passenger on a Royal Caribbean cruise was caught with both inside his cabin, where he had allegedly set up a drug-dealing operation. [More]
Feds Nab Satellite-Smuggling Microsoft Contractor
By 12.8.10
Someone forgot to pay attention to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which teaches that giving Slugworth an everlasting gobstopper will lead directly to ruin. In a sting operation, the FBI arrested an alleged satellite smuggler who did contract work for Microsoft. [More]
Man Arrested For Spilling His Midichlorians On Star Wars Toy In Florida Walmart
By 9.21.10
The Smoking Gun website has posted an affidavit describing a particularly skeevy toy aisle incident in a Florida Walmart. A man allegedly took a copy of the February Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue over to the toy aisle, then masturbated to it in front of the Star Wars toys. When he was done, according to a Walmart employee who witnessed the incident, he wiped his hand on a nearby toy; a police source who spoke with TSG says it was a Star Wars lightsaber. [More]
Woman Arrested Over Wet T-Shirt Complaints At Florida Children's Water Park
By 8.9.10
A 36-year-old woman says she’s planning on suing the city of Tavares, Florida, because its police force demanded her name for a “database” as she was leaving a children’s water park last spring. She’d taken her 7-year-old son there for the third time that season, and on each visit, other parents complained that her wet t-shirt and bra look was offensive. As she was leaving, a police officer demanded her name, and arrested her when she refused. [More]
Thief Steals iPhone While Victim Is Participating In GPS Tracking Demo
By 7.22.10
On Monday, a man in San Francisco rode his bike up to a woman holding an iPhone and snatched it out of her hand, then took off. What he didn’t know was that the woman had just walked out of her company’s office to test a new GPS program that provides real time tracking. She went back inside, gave the police location updates over the phone, and man was arrested a half-mile away, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Crime Scene blog. [More]
Woman Sues Movie Theater After Being Arrested For Filming Twilight Scenes
By 7.6.10
A woman who was arrested last November during a screening of whatever Twilight movie was in theaters at the time has filed suit against the movie chain. She says that she only filmed two short sequences, the opening credits and a moment when her “favorite actor” took off his shirt. Wisely, she does not say in her lawsuit whether she’s Team Beefcake or Team Emo, or my niece would possibly go ballistic. [More]
Authorities Bust International Credit Card Cloning Ring
By 6.15.10
Over 170 people around the globe were arrested on suspicion of participating in a massive credit card scam, reports Reuters. Fourteen countries were involved, and although most of the arrests were in Spain, there were also raids and/or arrests in Romania, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Greece, Finland, Hungary, and the United States. In all, police say they discovered at least 120,000 stolen credit card numbers. [More]
Cruise Line Employee Used Reservation List To Determine When To Rob Vacationers
By 6.14.10
I guess you could try to prepare your robbery schedule based on Foursquare and Twitter updates, but a former Royal Caribbean Cruise Line employee found a much easier way: she accessed the cruise line’s reservations list, wrote down the addresses of passengers and the dates they’d be on the cruise, and handed the list off to her husband. She’s being charged with 24 counts of burglary, while her husband will be charged soon. [More]
Man Gives $150,000 To Psychic, Then Suspects Fraud
By 5.10.10
A man in Portland, Oregon says he’s now bankrupt after giving cash, a Hummer, and lots of trust to a local psychic. In all, he says his payments totaled $150k and now he’s bankrupt, and that he wants to warn others not to fall for such things. So just to be clear: don’t give $150,000 in cash and autos to a psychic in exchange for removal-of-demon services. And if you want to buy a tabernacle from the Vatican, deal with the church yourself and don’t go through the local psychic. [More]
Prison Inmate Charged With Running Major Department Store Credit Card Scam
By 4.5.10
Seven Ohio men between the ages of 27 and 50 were arrested last week and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after an investigation found evidence that they were gaining access to strangers’ store-issued credit cards to buy and resale merchandise. The group’s leader, who was also charged, is a 33-year-old inmate at Fort Dix, NJ. Investigators think he initially met one of the Ohio men in prison. [More]
Man Arrested For Hanging Eight-Story Ad, Held On $1-Million Bail
By 3.3.10
Los Angeles has had a problem with illegal billboards for a while, but apparently it’s taking a ban on one type of display advertising seriously. “Supergraphics” are giant outdoor ads that stretch across the sides of buildings and are so big they can be seen from the International Space Station. Last month, the city filed a lawsuit involving several supergraphics already on display. A few days later a businessman hung an eight-story tall one on a building on Hollywood Boulevard, in the line of sight of cameras shooting red carpet coverage for the Oscars. He was arrested and held on a $1,000,000 bail. [More]
