Dumb Criminals: Forgery

The level of some people’s intelligence astounds me, but the only thing that astounds me more is the intelligence people have when it comes to how low they think other people’s intelligence is as well. Don’t drag us down to your evolutionary level.

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This story doesn’t technically meet the definition of a “dumb criminal.” It’s more of a “smart customs agent” story, but it’s hard to make a humor blog out of crafty airport employees. The material ain’t exactly a seller’s market.

NICOSIA (Reuters) - An England football shirt gave away a Senegalese man attempting to enter Cyprus on a forged French passport, police on the Mediterranean island said on Monday.

Suspicions were aroused when the man appeared at a checkpoint supervising crossings from the Turkish Cypriot north to the Greek Cypriot south of the divided island, wearing the England shirt and presenting a French passport.

“Being a football fan, the officer found it highly unlikely that a Frenchman would want to wear an England football jersey,” a police source said.

“That was his first suspicion prior to the proper check on the passport, which turned out to be a fake,” said the source.

The 22-year-old man, who has not been charged, was remanded in custody for six days pending further inquiries.

A Frenchman wearing an English “football” jersey? What blasphemy! He’s lucky Jacques Chirac didn’t stand him up in front of a firing squad.

Besides, who did he think he was fooling? France’s soccer team has a white flag on it.

Of course, this kind of thing would never arouse a U.S. customs agent’s suspicions. I mean, I grew up in New Orleans and if I wasn’t spotted wearing a Saints jersey, I got bumped up to first class.

Alexis Solis of Anytown U.S.A. send us this tale of treachery by three people who thought they could get away with check fraud by stealing a bank teller’s checkbook and then cashing the checks where the teller worked.

SYLVESTER, Ga. (WSB) — Three people accused of stealing checks in Worth County went to the wrong bank to cash them.

Joyce Powell is a clerk at the Sylvester Banking Company and was at work when a co-worker in the drive-through window told her someone was trying to cash one of her personal checks.

Investigators say the three suspects had just broken into four homes in rural Worth County.

The bank employee stalled the suspects, telling the one presenting the check that he must show some sort of identification. Meanwhile, Powell checked with authorities and learned someone had broken into her house.

The suspects became suspicious and left. But 27-year-old Calvin Barfield had left his driver’s license and Social Security card at the bank. It didn’t take authorities long to track him to a motel in Albany.

Trying to cash the check of a bank teller at the bank where the teller works is about as dumb as you can get. In fact, trying to steal a 747 for the peanuts is only slightly smarter.

Of course, I’m sure these “Dillengers-of-the Year” nominees didn’t realize they were trying to pass those checks at the owner’s place of work. But leaving your IDs at the crime doesn’t make you brilliant either. Why not just leave a set of your fingerprints and a vial of fresh DNA with the teller too, OJ?

There’s a great line from the movie “Wall Street,” “The main thing about money…is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.” Oliver Stone should have added, “and it don’t make you that much smarter either.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The counterfeit money looked good, but there was one flaw. There’s no such thing as a one billion dollar bill.

U.S. Customs agents in California said on Tuesday they had found 250 bogus billion dollar bills while investigating a man charged with currency smuggling.

Tekle Zigetta, 45, pleaded guilty to three federal counts of trying to bring cash, phoney bills and a fake $100,000 (57,000 pound) gold certificate into the United States in January.

A man tried to pass off a billion dollar bill as real? Doesn’t he know that Enron tried to do the same thing and look what happened to them?

I’ve never understood the logic of counterfeit money makes because they eventually get so greedy that they always get caught. This guy creates a billion dollar bill, and tries to use it? Who has change for a billion these days? I have a hard time finding change for the vending machine at the bus station.

And how do you trick someone into believing it’s real? The only way to make someone believing it’s truly the billion dollar bill, you’ll have to put George Steinbrenner’s face on it.

It’s that time of year again — Girl Scout cookies! That time of year when hundreds of thousands of girl scouts set up folding tables with their den mothers in front of stores all across the country where people wait in long, long lines so they can rip the little brats off.

TENINO (The Olympian) — A 10-year-old Girl Scout was excited when a woman asked to buy 10 boxes of cookies from her Sunday, and she was more excited to be paid with a $100 bill.

But her excitement turned to dismay when the Scout’s mother realized the bill was a fake, and a day of raising money for Scout trips ended with a valuable lesson.

“Sometimes you can’t trust just anybody,� the Scout said.

God, what an evil person. Who would do such a horrible, rotten, evil thing? I mean, other than Nixon. I hope they find this woman and strings her up by ear lobes — unless she got away with the thin mints. Then I can understand.

This evil spawn of the Devil herself bought $40 worth of goodies and handed over a $100 bill, and the mother gave her three $20s in change. The mother immediately thought the bill was fake and confirmed her suspicions with the store manager’s counterfeit money pen. The counterfeiter’s one big mistake? Money isn’t yellow.

So what makes this evil, rotten, horrid waste of flesh a dumb criminal? She had a fake $100 bill that she used to steal Girl Scout cookies. If I had a free $100 bill, there’s about a dozen strip clubs I’d spend it at and even if they found out it was fake, compared to a Girl Scout den mother there’s less than a 50 percent chance that I’d get tasered.