America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 1, Episode 1 - Return to Cinder - Full Episode | Forensic Files

this is an adc warning the crimes you're about to see are true only the names were changed to protect the ignorant
[Music] tonight on america's dumbest criminals a guy who graduated from the school of
hard knocks a chef with a recipe for arrest and a drug bust with a twist these are just a few of america's
dumbest criminals [Music] hi and welcome i'm daniel butler you know there's a reason that we changed
the names of the criminals that you see on this show it is our sincere belief and hope that many of them have realized
their mistakes and discovered that being a criminal just doesn't pay they deserve
a second chance but there are some people who need protection from themselves they need to be members of
the witless protection program which we offer here on america's dumbest criminals
our first story comes to us from captain mike cottage an explosive situation where a man had doused himself in
everything in his house with gasoline the swat team was several blocks away waiting to deploy and our initial
response team which was our negotiators they had gone up and surrounded the house and
had started trying some kind of dialogue you know gathering information and everything
come on out ronnie we can work this out it'll be all right no man forget it i drenched this house with gas and
this whole place is gonna blow ronnie wait wait ryan now just slow down ronnie there is always hope
let's talk oh shut up that talk dog i'm gonna talk i'm into this down ready ready wait ronnie
there was a tense silence the captain was ready to give the swat team the signal to go in
then hey hey cop what is it ronnie you got a match i see a match what'd you say ronnie
matches man uh eleven matches in the pickup truck we go come on again uh sure ronnie
look at your matches he was not prepared i guess preparedness would be the key on that one
[Music] watch now as officer chip simmons of the pensacola police department reduces a
dumb criminal's rock solid story to rubble a couple years ago i was working in the narcotics unit as a narcotic
investigator and what we would do on occasion was we'd go through these hot spots to where
they would have you know we have a lot of drug activity a lot of complaints about drug activity
a lot of these places were behind local nightclubs well um on this date we hit some of
these locations and as we hit one of them the entire unit jumped out of the van we ran stop some
people do not resist come on i didn't do anything i didn't do anything man i didn't do it oh yeah what's this huh we
found some cocaine on this one individual um but he didn't have any identification on him and we were trying
we tried for 20 minutes trying to figure out who this guy is he kept giving us one name and then he'd change it a
little bit and he'd give us an address and he changed a little bit but he always had a story you know or a reason
for why he changed it and what you know some kind of excuse for what the name problem that we would confront him with
so i figured i would test him so i asked him again where he lived he said something like 100 johnson
avenue i again thought that he was being so smug about having this address already in his mind that i would test
him with that and i asked him you know i was at that blue house on johnson he said yeah that's the blue house the big
blue one i said the one with the the white car i was parked there yeah yeah that's it yes thinking that he's you
know he's got me so i figured i'd further test him because you know i still didn't believe him and
i finally confirmed him i said no that can't be your house i know who lives in that house i said that's the rubble's
residence i said it can't be yours and he looked at me strange and um so i realized he didn't get it so
i said yeah barney and betty rubble live there you can't live there and he thought for a second he looked kind of
confused i bought that house from them eventually i we found out who he's what his real name was
it wasn't fred flintstone he didn't buy the house from the rebels and he was arrested
the yamadava dude was sentenced to hard labor on the bedrock pile in decatur illinois it's against the law
to drive without a steering wheel so if you don't have a steering wheel you can just slide right on by decatur
and now actual surveillance cam footage of a crooked cook giving gourmet lessons
to two undercover officers now it's time once again for cooking with chef crack today chef crack has been invited by
these two undercover narcotics officers to cook up some crack cocaine in their basement on video
jeff crack doesn't know he's being videotaped as he gathers together the fine ingredients
first of all you need a ziploc baggie of a controlled substance water oregano thyme
and an ashtray now chef crack will lightly simmer the whole concoction then he checks it to see if it's done
nope you'll need to simmer just a few moments more now you can do this in an electric range or gas stove or just use
the cigarette lighter in your pocket now be sure to add more water because there's nothing worse than burnt crack
well that's all the time we have for this week on cooking with chef craig unfortunately chef crack will not be
seen next week because the first show played in court if you'd like to write to chef crack
just contact him at state pen in care of the kitchen where he'll be serving up goulash for
the next 15 years coming up next on america's dumbest criminals a story of homegrown stupidity
[Music] [Music] in our next story officer scott mcdonald weeds out a dumb criminal
i had information this guy was growing marijuana in his house we couldn't get any probable cause to
obtain a search warrant so we went just was going to try to knock on his door and see if we could consent to search
how you doing all right we received information you're a cultivator of marijuana we'd like to come in and take
a look i ain't no cultivator okay i said well do you mind if we come in and search he said no i don't mind so he's
signed a consent to search as quickly as the intensive search began it ended hey what's this in here
a workout room we just walked through i went to the first bedroom open the closet and he had
marijuana growing in there and a incubator with the lights on it and everything what's this
marijuana i said i thought you said you weren't cultivating marijuana and we were videotaping the whole time
he's standing in front of video camera and he's later i ain't no cultivator i'm a presbyterian
the officers explained that cultivator was not a religious term but the man was indignant and he still insisted he says
oh i'm not a cultivator i'm just some guy that got some marijuana growing in his house
abc quiz number the people in concepcion peru were shocked when a man stole two chickens
why was it because a it was the first crime since 1762 b chicken stealing was a capital offense
or c there was only one chicken living in concepcion at the time the correct answer was a it was the
first crime since 1762 probably because the punishment for chicken stealing was a peruvian torture
treatment we now call a perm and now actual surveillance cam footage of a man who breaks into a retail shopping center
and overlooks some important details of his disguise maul in a day's work okay this burglar uses a bag for a
disguise not bad but the eye holes are way too small so he crashes into the first thing he comes to
a burglar alarm on display now he peers around the store but he realizes the eye holes just aren't
working so he retreats only to come back moments later with bigger eye holes and a flashlight now
he's getting around great but he forgot one thing he's wearing his maul guard security
pants he was identified later as the mall guard on duty at the time and now inside the courtroom for trial
and error a woman had her purse snatched but her assailants were apprehended now it was
time to identify them and she was scared of the two men who committed this horrible crime present in the courtroom
here present [Music] and now the funny story of a smash and grab artist who keeps himself in
stitches sergeant jim claiborne told us about the blockhead who came face to face with crushing justice
okay we were working with an informant on a burglary stakeout convenience store that been hit quite a number of times in
the in the city uh smash and grab operations where they'd take a a block and throw it
through the window and go in and steal all the cigarettes the gentleman came up to the front of
the store with a cinder block and since the store had been broken into a number of times they'd replaced a lot of the
large windows in front other than with glass with plexiglass he flung a cinder block against what he
thought was one of the glass windows which turned out to be one of the plexiglas windows
this criminal gives new meaning to the term blockhead [Music] he had to have a few stitches he went to
the hospital before he went to jail okay four of the windows were glass so he had a chance which is more than we
can say for this guy coming up on america's dumbest criminals [Music] next we go to officer gordon martinez in
las vegas who met a dumb criminal he just had to agree with i used to be a motorcycle police officer
and i pulled over this individual who was speeding southbound on jones from charleston
he was uh doing i believe about 50 miles an hour in a 35 mile per hour zone i got him on
radar pulled him over uh he immediately exited his vehicle and i was in full uniform on my police
motorcycle and he immediately just came out of the car and says well my life is over
i said well basically i think you're kind of just pushing this thing all out of proportion all you're doing is
speeding he goes no you don't seem to understand and i go well try me i'm i'm open
it says i'm finished my life is over you might as well shoot me right now i go whoa
i said well just tell me what's happened let's start out with the basics let me see your driver's license registration
and insurance form i don't have a driver's license well you just forgot it or he goes no
it's revoked oh that's bad all right how about the registration don't have that either we just don't
have the certificate or what he goes no the vehicle is unregistered i go it is it looks like you have valid plates on
the car the plates don't belong on the car looks like you got a valid sticker a sticker's not mine either
i suppose insurance is out of the question right i said okay the car is stolen the plates are stolen
he's driving on a revoked driver's license for dui no insurance and obviously the no registration
i confirmed with him his life was over as he knew it you know it's true people will do some
pretty dumb things when they know they're in front of a camera but they do even dumber things when they
don't know especially when it's a surveillance camera so let's watch the actual surveillance camera tape a case
we call the night crawler this crawling lady hid in a back room until the store closed to do her
shopping at a five finger discount now she's smart enough to stay down and not be seen through the windows but too dumb
to look up at the camera in plain sight the lady was apprehended the next morning when the owners came in they
called the exterminator who sprayed for night crawlers and then installed a nice
one bedroom nightcrawler motel in south carolina it used to be against the law to sell whiskey at night or on a
cloudy day when the law was repealed they made up for all those cloudy days this next
story came to us from detective chris stewart we put it in our book we put it in our home video and we liked it so
much we're bringing it back because folks it just doesn't get much dumber than this well we had a um what we call here
a 1017 armed robbery report that went out and the uh the center part of town of course i would make reference that
there was a girl working at a convenience store pretty girl working at a convenience store on one side and
there was a restaurant that gives half price to the police on the other side so this guy didn't have a prayer i mean
there were cops everywhere so we had a reported armed robbery that took place the officers responded to the
to the scene the dispatcher took the information over the telephone of a description of the suspect
searching a wide area one of the march units found what they both found a suspect
that they believe for the description so i went to the location myself and another detective
and we felt also that the guy fit the description of the on driver's suspect so i told the officers that we
need to take him back for id purposes for identification purposes called over the radio to have the unit that was at
the scene have her stand by have the victim stand by because we needed to bring somebody back for identification
now what happens is if you catch someone within a reasonable time after they commit a crime you take them back for
what they call one-on-one show up so that the victim can actually look at someone and say that is him or is not
him okay carmen now the suspect's about to step out of the car and i want you to
tell me if this is the man that robbed you we got back to the scene and had him step out of the car the suspect did just
exactly as he was told he stepped from the vehicle he faced the victim and he said
yes sir that's her that's the woman i robbed i don't believe that i haven't said it
so we went from there she didn't get a chance to say a word she identified him later but his initial
statement kind of threw everybody off [Music] welcome back to america's dumbest criminals pay close attention as officer
glenn biggs has a brief encounter with a dumb criminal a guy in custody for narcotics violations took him in started
to do the arrest report and got his name address and asked us what's your dob he said what's that i said when's your
birthday he said may 5th i said what year he said every year man [Laughter] all right you've seen what happens when
you make the wrong choice you will screw up you will get caught and you will feel
really dumb so be smart make the right choice don't break the law and we won't see you on america's dumbest criminals
you know we couldn't have done this show without the cooperation of the men and women of law enforcement across america
we'd like to thank them for their time their dedication and for making our lives a lot safer and we learned that
cops are just people too with one exception they're willing to lay down their lives
for us [Music] um [Music] here [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

In the series premiere of "America's Dumbest Criminals," we'll witness a guy who graduated from the school of hard knocks, a chef with a recipe for arrest and a drug bust with a twist.

Crime is no laughing matter, except when the criminals are bumbling fools. Hosted by Debbie Alan and Daniel Butler, this show looks at lawbreakers through a humorous lens.

Brief Summary

This episode highlights foolish criminals, including a man with gasoline, a chef cooking crack, and a marijuana grower in denial.

Key points

America's Dumbest Criminals. A showcase of the most ridiculous criminal acts and their consequences.
Explosive Situation. A man threatens to blow up his house while surrounded by police.
Chef Crack's Cooking Show. A criminal unknowingly teaches undercover officers how to cook crack cocaine.
The Blockhead Burglar. A burglar injures himself trying to break into a store with a cinder block.
The Night Crawler. A woman hides in a store overnight but fails to notice the surveillance camera.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Being a criminal just doesn't pay.

Daniel Butler reflects on the futility of crime.

1:12WatchDec 2, 2021

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.