America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 3, Episode 4 - Home Exterminator - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: Tonight on "America's Dumbest Criminals," a home exterminator who'll rid your house
of valuable possessions, a surveillance camera catches a burglar breaking and breaking and breaking and entering,
and a criminal who got the shaft long before he faced a judge. Stick around and see justice served as we go on patrol
for "America's Dumbest Criminals." [police radio] [music playing] -Duh. [applause]
ANNOUNCER: Now, welcome your hosts for "America's Dumbest Criminals," Daniel Butler and Debbie Alan.
DANIEL BUTLER: We're wearing the same clothes! -[laughs] Hey! -Debbie, I, I mean what sort of pests bother you the most?
Huh? -You mean besides you? -Oh! Yeah. Yeah, like-- -Just joking! -Just like bugs, right?
-OK, I pretty much hate all kinds of bugs. That's true. -Really? -Yeah. -See now, I, I sort of figured you would have empathized
with other little creatures, you know? -Oh, I deserved that. -Like Bambi. -Very funny.
-Bambi, Thumper, roaches, you know? -No. Bugs, ugh. Not bugs. -All right, so if your house was crawling
with, with critters, what? -I'd have the house so full of chemicals it'd probably look like Chernobyl.
-Wow! OK. All right, bug-free at any price, I guess. -Absolutely. -Well, there are some amazing hidden costs
when one particular exterminator visited your home. And a hidden camera caught it all.
-Police have a saying that if it wasn't for the dumb criminal, we couldn't catch anybody.
Oh, like with this story, uh, this guy's been doing this a long time. And I think he just got real complacent and real laid back.
And uh, I, I think the dumbness overtook him. This man uh, has an exterminating company.
[fly buzzing] -He's a very personable guy and he has a lot of customers. A, a lot of people would leave a key for him
and he would go in and do his exterminating. One particular man had lived on the beach side,
but kept noting things missing. Money missing off of his desks, some videos. And uh, he pretty well suspected this guy,
so he set up a hidden video under some laundry in his bedroom. That morning, Jeff comes in and he
comes in the bedroom where the camera is. And obviously, he's looking around. And he goes over to the dresser, as you see.
And there's big glass jugs full of coins. Reaches in, takes coins out, put them in his pocket.
And he would take the mug and he would shake it like he was gonna fluff up the coins
or some way make it look like he hadn't been there. And when I brought Jeff in for an interview,
uh, we asked him if he ever looked through drawers. "Oh, oh no, of course not." I asked him if he took anything.
[fly buzzing] DETECTIVE CHARLES GOSSETT (VOICEOVER): He started, I guess, catching on a little bit.
And, and he said, "Well, I might have taken some lunch money. I didn't have any lunch money that day."
MAN (VOICEOVER): Order in the court! Order in the court! DETECTIVE CHARLES GOSSETT (VOICEOVER):
And uh, he said, "OK, OK. You, you, you've got me here." And then he decided he didn't want
to talk about this anymore. [fly buzzing] -OK, just as that community breathed a little easier
with the exterminator's crime spree eradicated, we've got the story of a crook who
wanted to rid his conscience of all manner of vermin. Watch as this bad guy rats on himself.
-A couple of weeks ago, I was checking on a, a stolen motorcycle case and I went to the south side of town.
And I was driving through the neighborhood looking for the motorcycle. I saw these two guys standing in front
of a vehicle inside of this yard. Well, I didn't think anything about it. Matter of fact, when I passed by, I waved at them
and one waved back at me. As I continued through the neighborhood, I went back around that block again.
The same two guys were there. And uh, when I passed by the guys this time, they went off in separate directions.
And still didn't think anything about it, because that's not unusual around here.
So I continued to look through the neighborhood for this motorcycle. I came back around the area for the third time
and I looked in my rear view mirror and I saw one of the guys waving his hand, motioning.
Well, I thought he was flagging me down. You know, something had happened, he needs some help.
So I turned around in the roadway and approached him. -Hey, tell me what's going on, man.
SGT. PHILIP HIGHT (VOICEOVER): Well, this guy had a-- his face just turned just pure shock on him.
And he told me, he said, "I knew you were gonna get me! I knew you were gonna get me!"
And I had no earthly idea what this guy was talking about. Then he told me, he said, he asked me, he said,
"How did you know? How'd you know I did it?" And I still had no idea what he was talking about.
But I told him, I said, you know, "We're paid to know these things. That's what we do for a living."
So after that, he broke down and started confessing of how he broken into this lady's house,
pushed her down, took her pocketbook, run out the front door, and jumped in a car and took off.
Well, I was, I was shocked. I could not believe that this guy was confessing a crime that I had no idea about.
Nothing had been reported to any of our uh, agents about it. And um, I told him, I said, "Well look."
I said, "Tell me where the pocketbook's at. I know if you're lying or not, so don't lie to me."
Well, this guy said, "Well, you know it's in the floorboard of that car!" He said, "You know it is!"
So I take him back to the car where he was standing at, and I looked through the window of the car
and sure enough, there's a pocketbook on the floorboard. And I was thinking, man, I can not believe this guy.
This guy, he, he is stupid. Pure stupid. And not only was this guy charged with several felonies
and arrested, but he also flagged me down just to carry him to jail. [sirens] [applause]
-I'm Lieutenant Barry Shrum of the Ocala Police Department. As department spokesman here in Ocala, Florida,
it's my duty to report the news. Sometimes it's good news, sometimes it's bad news.
And every now and then, it's very unusual news. And a few months ago, the Denny's restaurant
here in Ocala was robbed by a robber that uh, chose a different style of uh, uh,
let's say undercover attire to do this robbery. And then it was my job to report this to the news.
-Every morning I call Lieutenant Shrum doing beat checks and ask him what's going on in the news?
What happened overnight? Barry said no money was taken and no one was injured, so I passed up the story and said I wasn't that interested.
He pulled me back and said, "I, I think this is one you're probably gonna be interested in.
This suspect, Anne, went into the store only wearing underwear." -This robber chose to put boxer shorts on his head.
-So of course, that caught my interest. -One of the first questions the reporters asked me was
could witnesses identify it? And that was quite unusual. I had no answer for that question.
The second question was how large was his weapon? -That was just too good to pass up.
I went to cover this story over at Denny's. And um, it was fun walking into the restaurant. 'Cause a lot
of times, when you approach a crime scene, it's really shaky. A lot of people don't want to talk.
They still didn't want to talk, but they all had smirks on their faces. The suspect walked into the store
and carrying not a typical weapon, he was armed with a wine bottle. It was a full wine bottle.
So he went up to the cash register and held it up and said, "I want the money from the cash register!"
And everyone was freaked out by what he wasn't wearing, so they ran to the back and he broke the wine bottle
to try to threaten them and splashed wine all over the ceiling. And then he tried to bust open the cash register,
but was unable to get any money whatsoever. -Once again, the suspect uh, he had a blue shirt on.
That was usual. The suspect uh, wore his boxer shorts on his head instead of his bottom.
And that uh, at this point is the bare facts of the infamous robbery at Denny's in Ocala, Florida.
[applause] -You remember how Otis on "The Andy Griffith Show" used to periodically stagger over to the jail
and lock himself up? Well, we found a driver who added a contemporary twist to that form of self arrest.
See for yourself. -Several years ago when our department uh, built its new building, uh, we had a new concept
that was built into it, that of a drive-through service window for people to come up.
This uh, featured two pneumatic tubes and of course, an intercom system. Allowed people to come up and uh, conduct business
within the police department without having to get out of their car, much like a bank service.
We'd only been in this building about 30 days when myself and another officer were standing in our parking
lot, saw a car pull up under the canopy, individual sitting there. And he pulled back and forth several times under the canopy
as, uh, as if he was having some type of difficulty. I told the officer I was out there with to check the man,
see if he was having some problems, something we could help him with. Officer stepped over there and I stepped
back inside the building. About a minute later, the officer called me and stated he was gonna
need a breathalyzer operator. Turned out this man-- at 10 o'clock in the morning--
thought he was at a bank, uh, and was arrested by our officers and charged with driving while impaired.
Detected 0.18 on the breathalyzer. He told us during the course of the arrest that he was simply trying to get his payroll check cashed
and couldn't make anyone on the other end of the intercom understand what he wanted.
-Here at "America's Dumbest Criminals" we hear unbelievable stories about the odd things
that people steal. Snakes, underwear, dog biscuits, commodes, even cockatoo eggs.
But frankly, we think this object of desire pretty much scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
-There are people who will steal anything, and I think this, this goes to that. DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER) : And what was the loot of choice?
Used grease. The unhealthy stuff used in healthy amounts by restaurants. -Our investigators followed them to over 30 places
where they attempted to uh, actually get grease. We know that they actually got grease at about 20 locations.
DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER) : This man was charged with siphoning off 7,400 pounds of used grease, which is sold to used grease
dealers for $0.14 a pound to be used in lotions, soaps, and cosmetics. Although he was clearly the fat daddy,
he had help in his oily deeds. -I didn't know I was stealing used grease. I was offered a job, you know, to make some extra money.
And come to find out, it was illegal. I didn't, I had no clue. DEBBIE ALAN (VOICEOVER) : You know,
the song says that grease is the word. Well, here in this slippery state, grease grabbing is a felony.
-It's one of the slickest operations I have ever seen. -Yuck! Well, now we go from a pretty slippery subject
to a criminal who wished he could move like greased lightning. Daniel? -Yeah. Yeah.
Well, this crook's particular pratfalls required the response of a veritable army
of civil servants. Let's report in at command central. NARRATOR: It's not all that unusual for police officers
to respond to a stick up at a convenience store. But here in San Antonio, they found
a crook stuck up an exhaust fan. Perhaps he thought that if Santa Claus could slide down
a chimney, that he'd have no trouble dropping in to pick a few items after hours.
But he was wrong. Real wrong. NARRATOR: It took hours of plotting, planning, prying,
pawing, pushing, pulling, and standing around before firefighters were able to disassemble
the exhaust and free the exhausted man so they could immediately put him in handcuffs and haul him away.
And so ends the caper of this fry-by-night operator. [door slams] -In my 10 years of buying uh, drugs on the street and uh,
making cocaine arrests, on one particular occasion we took a undercover police officer.
We had a hard time getting him in this location, so we wanted to uh, boost it up a little bit.
Instead of buying a $10 amount or a $20 amount of crack cocaine, we decided to send this undercover officer out
with a new $50 bill. Crisp, pretty, ready to go buy some cocaine. When the undercover officer got out there and presented the $50
bill for a $50 amount of cocaine, they did not want to accept this as US currency.
-Let me see the b-the bill, the dollar. You wouldn't game me like that, would you?
-[inaudible]. I need $50 to go down to [inaudible] with the homie. -They felt that the $50 bill was not real.
They wasn't familiar. They hadn't seen one of the new 50s yet. So all my drug dealers got together on a street corner
and had a roundtable discussion, holding it up, looking for the strip in it, looking for serial numbers,
debating back and forth to the undercover officer. And finally he convinced them that it was a real $50 bill.
The sale-- the trade actually-- for the $50 and the, and the cocaine took place.
And uh, they were eventually arrested for sale of crack cocaine within 1,000 feet of a public school.
[applause] -And now for the news that collects lint in the belly button of the world, here's Daniel with ADC Headlines.
[music and applause] -All of us have days when we'd do almost anything to avoid working.
But how far would you take it? A man in Buffalo Grove, Illinois called in three bomb threats
to Highland Park School gyms, causing the buildings to be evacuated and searched.
When police tracked down the culprit, he admitted to the hoaxes, saying that he could no longer
handle the pressures of coaching junior high basketball. It's like the NBA. Try to follow me on this one now, OK?
A perpetrator of a series of daring Dunkin' Donut robberies met the demise of his dastardly deeds
when doubling back to do the deed again at the first Dunkin' Donuts he'd robbed.
His name? Douglas Duncan. But he claimed he didn't act alone. His accomplice's name?
Howard Johnson. Obviously, the all you can eat clam thing didn't work out. A woman was trying on a bathing suit
in the dressing room of a Southern California department store when she saw something horrifying.
No, it wasn't cellulite or mismatched tan lines. It was a man's leg, which came crashing through the ceiling.
Realizing that he'd really put his foot in it this time, the man-- a security guard for the store-- confessed
on the spot and was arrested on a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct that specifically pertains to quote,
"someone looking through a hole or opening into a bathroom, dressing room, tanning booth, or other area
where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy." No word on whether the woman thought the swimsuit
made her look slimmer. That's all for this edition of ADC Headlines. Over to you, Debbie.
-Hey Dan, there's probably a federal guide somewhere that spells out safe handling practices
for handling a 500 pound safe. We're pretty sure what you're about to see violates these guidelines.
NARRATOR: When you think of safe cracking, you normally think of some nimble-fingered crook listening
intently for tumblers to fall. Well, these guys get the fall part right, but don't do so well with the cracking.
At least not until they push this convenience store safe over a wall. To get their haul of cash, they're
forced to haul off the safe, which is recovered when the men are captured. [laughs]
But there were telltale signs of trouble early on. OK, right here. Keep an eye on that guy's pants.
Oops! I mean, if a man can't keep his pants up, how's he ever gonna make it in this world?
-OK, two wrongs don't make a right. But five or six bad calls can land you in a local judge's
yard with police hot on your tail. That's the clumsy conclusion to this story. But let's go back to the beginning
to catch this criminal in all his befuddled glory. -I've been here 23 years. Out of that 23 years, I think this
is the funniest thing that's ever happened. On December 5, 1997, I was at that red light
right there coming this way when the alarm sounded in this bank. [alarm ringing]
CHIEF FRANK OSBORNE (VOICEOVER): We've never had a bank robbery in Jasper. I wasn't expecting it to be a bank robbery.
Looked inside, I knew everybody in there except for a woman that was dressed in a funny green suit.
And as I pulled up and parked, the lady come walking out the front, looked at me, was real nervous.
I pointed at her, tried to stop her. She broke and ran. Ran across the road over into the judge's yard.
When we busted through the hedge, I tackled her. Two things happened. One, money went flying everywhere.
Number two, when she lost her hat, I realized I had tackled a man, not a woman. During the scuffle, he broke loose from me and ran.
I decided to stay with the money instead of giving chase, because I knew there was plenty of backup around me.
This man was having a really bad day. I tackled him across the street from the bank
in Circuit Judge John Peach's yard. He almost got ran over by the police cars, threw his clothes down right here,
and the bloodhounds tracked him right to this apartment. When they entered and arrested him,
he was under the covers trying to hide, making out like he belonged in the apartment,
that he was just sleeping. When they come dragging him out, that was one sad looking boy.
He had had a bad day and got caught with it. [applause] -They say that ignorance is bliss.
In the case we're about to examine though, ignorance was a blast! -This week's edition of We're Not Making This Up
finds a low watt thief trying a high caliber approach to auto repair. Only the crook is firing blanks in this story.
-We received a call from a local hospital that a subject had suffered from a, a minor gunshot wound.
A subject who was having trouble with his vehicle had replaced a, a fuse with a 22 caliber bullet thinking
that would make continuity between the circuits and make the truck work. [gunshot]
CAPTAIN JOHN DRYDEN (VOICEOVER): It overheated and the round went off and struck him in the lower leg.
And uh, he learned a very, very valuable lesson about electronics at that time, I would suppose.
-[laughs] -I wouldn't have known that. -See? -I wouldn't have known that either.
-Well, it would happen to you too. Well, I think we'll go out with our criminal's blaze of glory.
But next week, we'll fire up a whole new batch of stories here on "ADC." -If you've got a lead on a story or just can't
wait till next week for more state of the art stupidity, visit our website at www.dumbcrimes.com.
-We want to thank you for joining us and extend our gratitude to the law enforcement
officers who make this show possible. Every day they lay their lives on the line
to keep us safe from the stupidity of would-be criminals. -As always, we hope we've all learned from others' mistakes.
-Hey, but if you haven't, we just might see you next week on "America's Dumbest Criminals."
-Goodbye, youse guys. [music and applause] [sirens] [music playing]

In this episode of “America’s Dumbest Criminals,” we’ll witness a home exterminator ridding a house of valuables, a camera catching a burglar literally breaking and then entering and a criminal who got the shaft before court.

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

A thief confesses to a robbery, an exterminator steals from clients, and a Denny's robber wears boxer shorts on his head.

Key points

The Exterminator's Crime Spree. An exterminator caught stealing from a client's home by hidden camera.
The Boxer Shorts Robbery. A robber in Ocala, Florida, wore only underwear during a heist.
The Drive-Through Arrest. A man mistakenly tried to cash a check at a police department drive-through.
The Grease Thief. A man siphoned off thousands of pounds of used grease for profit.
The Bank Robbery Mix-Up. An officer tackles a bank robbery suspect, only to find out he's a man in disguise.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I knew you were gonna get me!

A criminal confesses unexpectedly to an officer.

4:47WatchMar 3, 2022

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

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