These pages contain the best of stories about dumb crooks and dim bulbs that we've come across while doing useless news. While they are not updated as frequently as the useless news page, they are the funniest that we have come across.
A US man has been arrested after filling out a job application form before robbing a convenience store. Police in Athens, Georgia, are now holding Demetrius Robinson, 28, as a suspect in a number of local armed robberies. Robinson filled out the job application in the store to pass time until he and the clerk were alone, reports the Athens Banner-Herald. After the last customer left, he went behind the counter, pressed a steak knife into the clerk's side and made off with the contents of the till, according to police. Detective Jeff Clark said Robinson gave a bogus address on the form - but his real name and his uncle's telephone number. "It's kind of strange, but, yes, that's what he did," he said. Police still did not know where to find Robinson but an anonymous tip led officers to an apartment one block away from the store and he was arrested.
Romanian firefighters were shocked after a farmer was spotted using an unexploded missile as an anvil. The 122mm caliber missile, discovered by the man in his garden in Puieni village, Giurgiu county, a few months ago, had been used for sharpening hoes and scythes. Explosive specialists said the missile was still active and endangered not only the farmer's family but also his neighbors. A spokesman for the firefighters said: "We've had many problems because of these unexploded bombs which have been in the ground since the Second World War but this is really crazy. "How can you hit a bomb with the hammer? It could have exploded any time." The missile was destroyed in a controlled explosion by an army bomb squad.
A burglar who broke into a funeral parlour in Spain tried to fool police by playing dead. But he was caught out when police spotted his scruffy clothes - and then noticed he was breathing. Police and the Crespo Funeral Home said they had no idea what the 23-year-old man was trying to steal. Neighbors of the business, in Burjassot, near Valencia, alerted police when they heard the door being forced in the middle of the night. Police officers arrived with the owner, and eventually found the suspect lying on a table in a chamber used for viewing dead people during wakes. "The custom here is for dead people to be dressed in suits, in nice clothes that look presentable. This guy was in everyday clothes that were wrinkled and dirty," a police spokeswoman. "He was trying to fake being dead, but he was breathing." The funeral home said it was mystified as to what the man wanted, as there were no valuables or cash in the funeral parlour.
Police in Norway are looking for a thief who walked unnoticed out of an aquarium carrying a crocodile. The stolen reptile, named Taggen, is a 2.3ft long smooth-fronted cayman, also known as Schneider's dwarf cayman, reports Metro. Bergen aquarium director Kees Oscar Ekeli said: "I think whoever did this knew what they were doing. "It has a solid bite. Considering it is not bigger than it is, you could lose a few fingers, but no vital organs." Ekeli feared that the four-year-old would have poor chances of surviving outside its habitat in the aquarium, and said it would probably die from stress. The theft was immediately reported to the police and the aquarium is offering a £2,500 reward for anyone providing information leading to the recovery of the crocodile.
A German pensioner is suing a hospital after she checked in for an operation on her leg - and woke up to find she had been given a new anus. The clinic in Hochfranken in Bavaria has suspended the surgical team concerned after they apparently mixed up the notes for two patients. The woman complainant was expecting an operation on her leg, while another patient, suffering from incontinence, was scheduled for surgery on her sphincter. The woman, who still needs to have the leg operation, is planning to sue the hospital and is looking around for another hospital to carry out the work..
Kidnappers who abducted Gildo dos Santos near his factory in a suburb of Sao Paulo, Brazil, demanded $690,000, but Santos escaped. The next day, Santos got a phone call asking for $11,500 to defray the cost of the abduction. After negotiating a discount of 50 percent, Santos called police, who were waiting when Luiz Carlos Valerio showed up to collect payment.
A bicyclist who confronted three well-dressed men walking to their hotel in Alexandria, Virginia, pointed what looked like a 9mm semi-automatic handgun at them and demanded money. The three men turned out to be off-duty federal agents, who drew their own weapons and fired more than 20 shots, hitting the would-be robber, as well as three cars, a truck, two homes and an office building. The injured suspect's weapon turned out to be a pellet gun.
FBI agents in Jacksonville, Florida, arrested brothers Robert, 54, and Kenneth, 49, Alberton, accusing them of talking dentist John Rende into letting them chop off his finger with an ax so they could claim it was an accident and collect a fortune in insurance money. Rende at first agreed to the scheme, then changed his mind. The Albertons forcibly cut off his right index finger anyway. Unable to continue practicing dentistry, Rende collected $1.3 million. He paid the brothers $45,000. Later, they tried to extort $500,000, so he notified the FBI.
In February, two boys, ages 15 and 14, were released from court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a hearing before Judge Larry Seidlin for stealing a car, which according to police, was the 25th car theft committed by the boys in two years. According to police, the boys walked out of the courthouse, realized they had no bus fare home, and promptly swiped number 26, which they crashed into a fence 45 minutes later.
Police in Virginia Beach, Virginia charged Charles Robertson, 19, with robbing a bank when he bungled his way into their hands. After handing the teller a holdup note, Robertson started to flee but stopped when he realized that he had forgot his note. He dashed back and grabbed the note, but this time he left the keys to his getaway car -- a fact he didn't discover until he reached the vehicle. he managed to elude police, but when he got home he told his roommate, whose car he had borrowed, that it had been stolen. She reported the car missing, and about 20 minutes later Officer Mike Koch spotted it a block from the bank. Playing a hunch, Koch got the keys the robbery suspect had left behind. When they fit the car that had been reported stolen, detectives went to the address the owner had given and found Robertson.
In Mexico, three armed state police officers surrounded a car containing the eldest son of President Ernesto Zedillo and demanded money, apparently unaware of their victim's identity. They learned it soon enough when another car containing presidential bodyguards stopped, and the guards overpowered the police.
Natron Fubble tried to rob a Miami delicatessen, but the owner broke Fubble's nose by hitting it with a giant salami. Fubble fled and hid in the trunk of a parked car. The car belonged to a police undercover team that was trailing another criminal's truck. After five days, the officers finally heard Fubble whimpering and arrested him.
Law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C., discovered more than 200 marijuana plants growing throughout a house during a search and arrested home owner James Rapp and a tenant, Barry Oliver, 44. U.S. Secret Service spokesperson David M. Adams explained that the authorities searched the house only after tracing a call by one of the men threatening the president. According to WRC-TV, Oliver was tape-recorded saying that he had "a score to settle with President Clinton" and that he planned to "cut him from ear to ear."
In St. Paul, Minnesota, two masked gunmen claiming to be police officers burst into a home and tied up a 39-year old woman and her two teenagers with duct tape. The men wore black pants, black T-shirts with the word "POLICE" and pantyhose over their faces, according to the woman, who said they asked for a man and, when told he didn't live there, said, "Damn, we got the wrong house." Another daughter elsewhere in the house had already called police, but the men fled before squad cars arrived.
Police in Bari, Italy, arrested a man suspected of snatching handbags to finance his drug addiction after he sped past one woman on his motorcycle and snatched her purse. The woman was his mother, who recognized him and reported him, said a police spokesperson, adding, "We were rather surprised by the whole episode, I must admit."
The attorney for Howard "Wing Ding" Jones, accused of selling drugs, sought to lower his client's bail from $150,000, insisting in a Norristown, Pennsylvania, courtroom that Jones was not a risk to flee. At that very moment, Jones bolted from the courtroom and sprinted out the front door. Police captured him 50 minutes later and returned him to the courtroom, where his bail was raised to $500,000.
Belgian prosecutor Marc Florens was surprised to see a defendant wearing a familiar-looking jacket. It was his, having been taken, along with a camera and some money, during a burglary of his home. The defendant, who had been charged with theft in Bruges, claimed to have bought the jacket in Paris, but the label proved it belonged to Florens, who got it back and turned over the current trial to another prosecutor.
Kansas City, Missouri, authorities charged Dale Richardson, 20, with snatching a purse from a woman dining with a friend at a restaurant. The victim was Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Claire McCaskill. After making off with the purse, the suspect reportedly called McCaskill's house and offered to return the purse, which contained $50 cash and her prosecutor's badge, for a $250 reward. A police officer posing as McCaskill's baby-sitter, met the suspect, who was arrested soon after.
New Jersey Trooper Glenn Lubertazzi stopped a car for speeding and was asking the three occupants routine questions when one of them, Tina Stigger, 30, asked if she could have a cigarette from a pack in the car's glove compartment. While handing the pack to the woman, he noticed it contained a marijuana joint. Authorities reported that a search of the vehicle turned up $32,000 in suspected drug-buy money, marijuana and drug paraphernalia.