Danny Galindo, the late LAPD detective who’s the hero of the book you see on your right (whose denouement revolves around Dragnet), once told me about some of the dumbest criminals he’d encountered in his career.
One of them, he said, stole a blank check, wrote it out to himself for a million bucks, and went to cash it at the bank. Another idiot wandered around a TV store before grabbing a 19-inch set and lugging it outside without a way to get it home; he’d ridden a bus to the store.
It seems likely that this former janitor would make Galindo’s pantheon:
A sex romp at a public park helped prosecutors convict a California woman of faking an ankle injury to collect workers’ compensation payments, authorities said.
Modupe Adunni Martin, 29, was sentenced to nine months in jail on Thursday in San Mateo County after pleading no contest in October to felony workers compensation fraud.
Martin was caught on videotape in August 2009 throwing her crutches into a car and running in high heels to meet her boyfriend at a public park, where she took part in a sex act that doctors concluded she couldn’t have done with an injured ankle, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
She was arrested and charged with 10 counts of insurance fraud. …
Martin reported the injury in February 2009 while working as a janitor for the Sequoia Union High School District.
Claiming the injury left her unable to walk, Martin made 10 visits to doctors over a three-month span. A co-worker suspected she was exaggerating and alerted the district, which advised investigators.
Maybe the best part of the story is imagining how the “investigators,” who were no doubt tailing her, reacted when they observed her tossing away the crutches and running—on high heels!—to her tryst. I have a feeling that the soundtrack to the video is hysterical laughter.
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I’ll never forget the night I was working in the warrants section of LAPD by myself one night and received a call from a man in New York who NYPD had forwarded to me.
He was very pleasant and polite … and quite insistent that Lindsay Lohan, who’d been arrested by LAPD, needed to hear from him. He had something very important to tell her and she’d want to hear from him, he assured me. He was an amiable old guy, but quite obviously bonkers.
Just a few nights ago I had a rookie cop who called me about a stolen car he’d recovered. He was having a little trouble giving me the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) phonetically, straining to remember, e.g., JHMEB … would be said, “John, Henry, Mary, Edward, Boy …” When he got to the number six, he said, “Ummm, what do we use for six?” Me: “Six.”
He sounded awfully tired.
LukeHandCool (who, since the letters J, P, and G are said as, John, Paul, and George, is leading a crusade to have R changed from Robert to Ringo)
She was wearing high heels while on crutches?? It would be great fun to see that video.
I read somewhere (don’t recall where) about a guy who robbed a bank – and when the police searched his apartment they found a “To Do” list for the day, which included, you guessed it, “rob bank.”