America's Dumbest Criminals - Season 4, Episode 24 - Pinata Surprise - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: Tonight on "America's Dumbest Criminals." These fugitives think they're setting sail for a good time,
but a sinking feeling is about to set in. And this is no pinata, but is there a surprise inside for this would-be car thief?
Things are seldom as they seem and never as crooks dream, here on "America's Dumbest Criminals."
[music playing] Now welcome your hosts for "ADC," Daniel Butler and Debbie Allen.
[applause] -Debbie, Debbie? -Yeah, yeah? -I sense a little something unfair here.
-What is the problem? -Well, I checked the show run down, and it says Debbie and Daniel enter
wearing boas across their shoulders. OK, yours comes from Victoria's Secret, and mine came from the Garden of Eden.
[laughter] -Actually, I don't think you're wearing a boa. I think that's a python.
-Oh, well, yeah, I feel so much better now. -Oh, you're not scared, as you? -Me, are you kidding?
No. -We could swap. -Great, oh, that'd be swell. Yeah, I'd go from looking like Alice Cooper to Ethel Merman.
Give me a great. [laughter] Then I'd have to start belting out show tunes. I'm not prepared for that, no.
-I think you're chicken. -The lady in the ostrich feathers is calling me chicken.
Oh, yeah, of course. No, I'm completely comfortable with this representation of pure evil draped across my shoulders!
But just for safekeeping, you know, I think I'll-- I'll-- turn him over to someone more qualified
to deal with his mood swings. [laughs] He's squeezing. He's squeezing. He's squeezing.
He's squeezing. There you go. Oh! OK, thank you, Blair. Thank you. -Wait a minute, you don't have the nerve
that a cute 17-year-old girl does? -Well, ah, huh, you think this is scary? You should see her boyfriend.
Woo. [laughter] -We're going to get to a story about snakes in just a little bit.
But first we turn from boas to boats. -Ooh, these people boarded a boat bound for trouble, even
without Gilligan being aboard. -Join us aboard a ship of fools who were caught on camera.
[music playing] -I spoke with the chief of police and asked him about trying to clear up
some of our old outstanding warrants. We decided to do a cash sweepstakes. We decided to plan it on the 4th of July weekend.
We utilized a restaurant that was on the lake to have a nice atmosphere. We created all of these letterheads and mail
merged them with a number of different names from our files. -They had a phone line set up for people
to call to confirm it. Because I know a lot of people call up the police time. What they'd just them was, yeah, sure.
Just come on down here. You know, let's-- it's legitimate as far as we know. It's being held at Lake Chargoggagog--
a-gog-- manchogagogago-- there's quite a few "gogs" in there and chagungagoamong.
We call it Webster Lake. -There's only one road in and one road out to the restaurant,
so we were trying to figure out how we were going to transport everybody out. After the brainstorming with the chief and some other officers,
we decided that we would use party boats and ship people across the lake to a memorial beach
where we had a sheriff's department van waiting. We even went to the extent of ordering a cake
from a local supermarket in red, white, and blue with Congratulations Liberty Sweepstakes
Winners printed on it. We brought people down. One at a time behind the restaurant under the pretense
that we were going to take their picture by the water as they were presented with this check,
and we sprang it on them. -It was amazing how many people said, I knew it was kind of hinky.
But I just had to come down for the money. -And all they got was a free boat ride.
Overall, we were the real jackpot winners of this sweepstakes. We net at 32 people in all.
[applause] -How far would you go to feed your addiction? -Well, in this case, we're not talking
about heroin, or crack, or butter pecan ice cream. -We're talking about a technology junkie, a guy that
got his fix from cable TV and 1-900 phone lines. -Yeah, see how far we've sunk as a society
with the media maven who provides something to remember me by. [music playing] -Numerous reports came in where neighbors were reporting
that they had 900 calls coming in on their home phones, unexplained, couldn't figure out what was going on.
Shortly thereafter, another report came in. Woman comes home, walks in the door,
and she notices a stranger, white male, sitting in her living room, shoes off, watching TV.
She startles the suspect. He gets up, grabs his stuff, and runs out the backdoor.
Well, he leaves one of his shoes behind. We do a sketch later on and shortly thereafter,
we have another sighting. A woman sees a young man in the backyard. So she calls the place.
Myself and my partner take a hunch and we just go over to the neighborhood where he's last spotted.
So we do a little surveillance. We're sitting out there in our unmarked cruiser,
sitting there for about two hours. And low and behold, here-- here comes our suspect out between two houses.
And of all the places he picked to come out, he walked right in front of our car.
And he's looking around to see if anybody's looking. And we're sitting right in front of him.
When he turns his head to the left side, we duck. We're in the car. And we're thinking, this guy's made us.
So he gets into the car, into his car, thinking he's made it. He's broken into a couple homes.
And as he's pulling out, we stop. We try to stop. And he takes off. He just-- just flies down the road, takes two blocks,
ends up right at his house, parks right in the middle of the road, runs into his house.
We're right behind him. Shuts the door, locks the door on us. And shortly thereafter, we get into the house.
And he admits to 26 burglaries where he's breaking into these people's homes, using their phones to die 900 numbers.
And I ask him, I said, whatever happened to that shoe that you happen to have? And walks in his bedroom, pulls out the shoe,
has the matching shoe. He kept it. When you leave your shoe behind, and you walk in front of two
cops, you're bound to get caught. [applause] NARRATOR: In West Virginia, it's perfectly legal
to take road kill home for supper. -When you're a drug dealer, you live life in the fast lane.
But every once in awhile, even drug dealers need to take the off ramp for some down time.
What happens next provides one of America's dumbest excuses. [music playing] -Here in Ocala, we work under the community
policing philosophy. And under that philosophy, we often ask for our citizens, our residents, and our community
to team up with us to help us catch drug dealers. Just a few months ago, one of our residents
called us, told us there was somebody in a car outside her home selling drugs and also using drugs.
CORPORAL WALTER PRESSLEY: Upon my arrival in the area, I saw a guy that fit the description.
Well, he didn't see me, because he was asleep. LIEUTENANT BARRY SHRUM: In one hand was a bag of marijuana,
in the other hand was a vile filled with crack cocaine. CORPORAL WALTER PRESSLEY: So what I did was
I slipped in the marijuana out of his-- out of the one hand. And I tested it, and it tested positive.
Then I went back, and the young man was still asleep. So I slid the other substance out of the other hand.
And it tested positive for cocaine. I thin went back to the car, and I woke him up.
Sir, I need you to wake up. I need you to get out of the car. You're under arrest.
And he told me that he'd been asleep there for awhile, and someone must've put it in his hands while he was asleep.
[applause] -In our next story, the culprit is a real snake, in every sense of the word.
Don't believe me? Take a look at our blue light special. [music playing] -We got a call about a subject in a lady's driveway.
And when asked to describe him, the lady said it was about nine foot long, had slick skin, and brown eyes.
She says as long as my car. I'm not scared of snakes, but that's reason I don't mess with snakes.
And so I wasn't too happy about finding a nine-foot snake myself. So I call the fire department.
The firemen started drilling holes in the floor joist of this lady's house. We were down to the last floor o joist, one of the fireman
finished drilling the holes. And I saw him jump back, and we found the snake. And we had no way of getting it out.
I squirted the snake with pepper gas. And when I did, this snake just sort of went wild.
Its tail flipped out. And three volunteer firemen grabbed the snake about the tail.
And when the snake let go, it let go all at once. And it fell and just a group of firemen, so everybody
takes off and running. And he starts raring up, like he's gonna bite. So my other policeman went in and shot at it twice,
and I went and shot the snake in the head and killed it. And I believe right now if we'd a had a video of that,
we'd be rich people. [laughter] [applause] -On the old TV show, "Candid Camera,"
you never knew when host Alan Funt was going to appear from behind a two-way mirror.
I think you'll see some striking similarities reflected in our next story. Take a good look.
-Coming to work, and I was wearing my uniform with a civilian coat over the top.
And I was stopping off in the morning to one of her favorite spots, Donut World to pick up some donuts
for the men and women of our unit before we started the day off. I went inside the donut store, and I
had my civilian coat over the top. And when I turned around after I got the donuts and the coffee,
there was someone breaking into my auto. So I took my coat off, put the donuts down--
didn't want to do that-- but went outside, tapped the guy on the shoulder. He had a coat hanger going in the side of my car.
I asked him what he was doing, he said he lost his keys, and it was his uncle's car.
And he have to get in the car right away, get it back to his uncle. And we had a few words out there,
but the conversation was over, that he was not my nephew. The equipment in there was police equipment in there.
And he was under arrest. [applause] -And now with news found tangled in the world wide web.
Here's Daniel with ADC headlines. [applause] -They were up a creek without a paddle.
In Washington state, several Boeing aircraft employees successfully stole a life raft from a 747 plane
and soon thereafter took it for a float on a nearby river. But their hearts sank when they noticed a Coast
Guard helicopter hovering above. Apparently none of them realized that an emergency locator
automatically activates when a raft is inflated. Beep, beep, beep. You know how young guys love to impress
the girls with flashy cars? Get this. A 15-year-old boy in Middletown, Connecticut,
was driving a different vehicle every time he visited his girlfriend. Oh, Bobby, cool Mustang.
Oh, Bobby, I love your new Blazer. Whoa, smokin' Yugo, Bobby. Apparently she wasn't savvy enough
to figure out that his hot cars had been hardwired. In fact, the young car hood went through 16 vehicles
in two months. Police caught up with Romeo when they traced his cell phone calls made from the vehicles to naive Juliet's house.
And now wherefore art her Romeo? Juvenile detention is my guess, ah? It was a tense moment in the courtroom.
The district attorney motioned to the two defendants and asked the victim of an armed robbery, who was seated
on the stand, which one of these two men had the shotgun? Truly, without thinking, one of the defendants
quickly raised his hand. In a feeble attempt at covering for his feeble-minded client,
the defendant's attorney stood and said, your honor, may the record reflect that my client
needs to use the restroom. And that closes the file on ADC headlines, news ripped from somewhere near the back
of your local newspaper. Debbie? [applause] -OK, stop me if you've heard this one.
A priest, an old lady, and a crook are stopped at a roadblock. You haven't heard it?
Well, instead of me giving you the punchline, let's go to Sergeant Norman Denton in Carlsbad, New Mexico,
for his special delivery. [music playing] -New Mexico has a law that allows us to do driver's
license insurance and registration checks. And I was at one of those roadblocks.
Well, three cars came in on my road. As I was looking at them, I knew the first one.
My dad used to own a funeral home, and he was a Catholic priest. So I was talking with him.
And as I was talking with him, the next two vehicles pulled up. One was an old lady in her brand new Crown Victoria,
and then what I call a scumbag. I knew from looking at him he was a doper. I thought, well, I'll just kind of set him up.
So talking to the priest, I said, Father, do you mind if I check your vehicle out?
And the priest, well, Norman, why? And I said, well, I really don't have time to tell you now.
But I'll tell you later. So he opens the back door. We pull the backseat out. I open the trunk up, look through it,
put everything back. And I said, oh, I'll call you later on and tell you about it.
He drives off, and the old lady pulls up. Brand new car, has a sticker in the window.
And I said, ma'am, you know we're thinking about getting some of these Crown Vics for police cars.
You mind if we look your vehicle over? And of course, older people love to help cops.
-Oh, I would love to. -Boy, she jumped out of the car, opened the back doors. I look inside.
She opened the trunk. We pulled the spare tire out, and put it all back. And I thank her.
Now I'm just standing there, and I watch her drive off. Well, the scumbag pulls up.
And I just turned around and looked at him. I said, hi. He's sitting there behind the wheel,
just shaking and sweating. He goes, officer, I-- I knew you checked them, so I know you're going to get me.
And he reaches down and hands me just under three pounds of marijuana. -It's marijuana.
I'm sorry. -All I said was hi to him. That was the easiest drug bust I ever got.
[applause] -When the commotion started at a large toy store, the employees must've thought the Rock 'Em
Sock 'Em Robots had come to life. But that's not the case in this case. But to find out just who was getting their blocks knocked
off, let's go to North Miami Beach, Florida. -This is a story about two dumb criminals
that we found at Toys R Us in our city. I call them dumb and dumber. A couple years ago, it was the night
of December 24th, the day before Christmas. And these two brothers decided that they
were going to rob Toys R Us. They went into the store while the store was very crowded.
And they went into the men's room. They pushed up the ceiling tiles, and they climbed up into the roof.
And they hid up on top of the air conditioning duct. Well, they were sitting there for quite a period of time,
waiting, and they started talking in a low voice. But they started arguing with each other.
The stock boy who was in the stockroom right next to the bathroom heard voices from the ceiling.
So he called his store manager over. And the store manager came in, and they both looked up into the ceiling.
And they heard voices from the ceiling. So they didn't know what was going on, so they called the police.
We get there, and the officer comes in. And he's listening to the store manager.
They push up the ceiling tiles. They bring in a K-9 dog. And they say, OK, this is the police.
We know you're up there. Come on down. Well, nothing happened. So we get the dog barking and said, all right.
We're going to send up the dog if you don't come down now. Can you see the K-9 officer throwing his dog in the air?
It would never happen. But the dog's barking. They got scared. They came down. They had radio, a walkie-talkie, and they were in communication
with somebody in the parking lot, and as soon as that person who was probably in the getaway car
saw the police, he was a dumb, dumb, and dumbest, because he took off and left this friends sitting in the store.
It was quite a crime, a crime that almost was pulled off. [music playing] NARRATOR: In Wyoming, it's illegal to take a picture
of a rabbit during the month of June. [applause] -You've heard the expression, he was
so drunk he couldn't see straight? Well, we can go you one better. -It really happened in Logan, Utah,
and we're not making this up. [music playing] -I was on patrol here in Logan and working
the Center Street area. And this car came off of Center Street, and it was all over the road.
It was having trouble working the clutch, and the gas pedal, and a new driver, and there was no traffic,
so I followed it for about a block and a half, and it just maintained this driving pattern.
And I was able to do a traffic stop on it a couple blocks down the road on First West.
I approached the vehicle and made contact with the driver and detected an odor of alcohol coming from the car.
And then I recognized the parties. And I'd known them from prior contacts and asked the driver to step out and started
asking him why he was driving. And he began to inform me that it's because he and his buddy
had been out drinking, and they had determined that he had had the least amount of alcohol.
And he'd be the safest driver. And I confirmed that story with the other passenger,
and then went back to the driver and said, I appreciate, you know, the integrity you're showing
and your care and concern for the citizens of Logan, but you're blind. Why are you driving?
And how did you drive this car? And he says, well, we thought that my partner was the most
intoxicated, so he would tell me right or left, or more gas, or break, or-- and so they had determined
that a blind guy driving this car away from the bar would be a lot better than the drunk guy driving it.
They both had too much to drink, and they both ended up being arrested for intoxication and DUI.
[applause] -Great idea. Now I feel like Medusa. -And I feel like Eva Gabor on "Green Acres." (ACCENT) Oliver!
-This boa was definitely a better look for you. -Yeah, no. I know. I think-- -I think it's time we said some very fast goodbyes, please.
-What, what, you're nervous? -Yes. -Come on, you know in the wild he eats wombats bigger than you?
-[laughs] -Yeah, oh yeah. -Can we hurry this along? -Yeah, huge. -Where is he? Where's his head?
What's he doing? -He's just right there, having a good time. -Is he in my hood? -Yeah.
-Snakes in my hood, OK. Hey, if you've got a lead on a story, or you just can't wait for more state-of-the-art stupidity,
hurry and write this down. Visit our website, www.dumbcrimes.com. -He's tightening.
He's starting to tighten. -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 save from the stupidity of would-be criminals. Isn't that a nice thing?
-[laughs] Yes, it is. -Yeah. Would you like to discuss it at length? -No! Come on!
As always, we hope that we've all learned from others' mistakes. -But if you haven't, we just might see you next week
on "America's Dumbest Criminals." -Bye-bye! [applause] [music playing]

In this episode of “America’s Dumbest Criminals,” we’ll witness some sailors out for a good time who quickly begin to sink, a surprise for a car thief and much more.

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

Police use a fake sweepstakes to catch fugitives in this episode of America's Dumbest Criminals.

Key points

A Boat Bound for Trouble. Fugitives think they're setting sail for fun, but trouble awaits them.
The Cash Sweepstakes Trap. Police set up a fake sweepstakes to catch criminals, netting 32 people.
The Blind Driver Dilemma. Two intoxicated friends decide a blind driver is safer than a drunk one.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Things are seldom as they seem and never as crooks dream.

NARRATOR introduction

0:20WatchMar 10, 2022

Tension

40/ 100Low tension

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