Google Is Your Friend, Unless You're A Dumb Criminal; Then It's Your Downfall

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the search-sentence-terms dept

One of the common aspects of most of the stories about dumb criminals we cover here is how they use some aspect of technology to do something tangentially stupid. Recall, for instance, the stupid fraternity that somehow thought they’d get away with going Heisenberg on their Facebook page, or when a young woman robbed a bank and then bragged about it on YouTube. But what if you had on your hands a criminal so dumb that they weren’t sure exactly what would happen once they had attempted their criminal-y exploits? Well, what is your first step these days if you want to get an answer to something?

Meet Sarah McLoud, Robert Owens, and Daniel Murphy of Boston, a group of not particularly intelligent bank robbers. These three were apparently dissatisfied with the heroin ring they were allegedly running, so they decided to rob a bank. But they didn’t know how to successfully rob a bank, evidenced further by the ease with which they were caught.

Narcotics detectives who viewed surveillance footage believed they recognized McLoud, a suspect in the ongoing investigation of a heroin ring based at 51 Torrey St., just around the corner from the bank, police said. Owens was also a suspect in that investigation. Police found McLoud and Owens at the Torrey Street address shortly after 4 p.m. and arrested them, according to the statement. Police did not disclose the arrests until Monday. Officers then secured a search warrant for McCloud’s room at Torrey Street and found the clothing she wore during the robbery, the stolen cash, and “a significant quantity of heroin packaged for sale,” police said.

Fine, so we have a drug dealing trio that apparently went to the Superman School Of Hiding In Plain Sight when it comes to concealing their identities. And, sure, perhaps keeping all of that sweet china white and the clothes they robbed the bank in out and available for police to find was stupid. But how about an extra bit of stupidity candy to really wrap this all up? Remember the question I asked you above? What would you do if you wanted to rob a bank but didn’t know much about robbing banks? You already know where this is going, don’t you?

Officers also found a computer recently used to search the phrases, “What happens if you rob a bank,” “What happens if you rob a house,” “What happens if you rob a drug dealer,” and “If you’re going to rob a bank,” police said.

Ah, delightful, because apparently all the copies of Robbing Banks For Dummies at the local library had already been checked out. So here’s a note to my idiotic criminal friends: burn your clothes, hide your heroin, and at least clear your search history from your browser after you carry out your nefarious misdeeds. Otherwise, you just look lazy.

Filed Under: criminals, search