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tonight on america's dumbest criminals what happens when a guy has a half-baked
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idea about stealing a bread truck a major mistake without major appliance gets this crook stopped cold sit back
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and relax your life is gonna look much better when you compare it to america's
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dumbest criminals [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] wow [Music] [Music]
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now welcome your host for america's dumbest criminals daniel butler and debbie allen
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hi there hey debbie david debbie yes sir what is your dream car oh dream car i rode in a limo once that
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was fun oh you want dream car and driver of course i shouldn't know oh i'd want a hummer you know like
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schwarzenegger something scary yeah don't you think most people would choose
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something like sporty like a porsche or classic like a 57 chevy maybe yeah most people yeah but the guy we're going to
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meet a little later knew he thought it'd be great to ride around town in a bread truck but first up is a
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story that involves bootlegged compact discs you're about to meet a man who multiplied his miseries by duplicating
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record albums let's join him for his swine song [Music] we entered into a transaction with a guy
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that was selling counterfeit microsoft windows 98 cds i bought sperm several times made an
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arrangement to buy another 850. when he arrived he was 45 minutes late always happens that way he parks in the
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wrong place he's completely out of view from my her my surveillance team my cameras and everything so i have to ask
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him to come over just like an idiot or a dummy that he was he just pulls it over there right
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next to my car work where it's in view of everything during the purchase itself basically i
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gave him eight thousand five hundred dollars he had it in his hand for about five seconds
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until my takedown team took him off it's really funny because he questioned me so many times about being
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a policeman and i reassured him the whole time that i wasn't a policeman and he was just so dumb that he believed
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me the whole time i wasn't the cop and i was at the end he was scared to death at that time
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he basically didn't know what to do and uh after knowing or asking i was thinking i
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was a policeman the whole time he basically just sat there and [Music] [Applause]
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didn't believe he was good after all that debbie you remember those old episodes
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of lassie you know when lastly would get separated from her family and then she she seemed lost and then finally she
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came home you know oh sure i remember him i can tear up just thinking about him you know me too but our next dork is
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almost exactly like that except the part of lassie is played by a sport utility vehicle
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here's this week's heart-rending installment of something to remember me
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by here's for you all right well one of the hardest cases we've had to work here is a guy stole
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the mayor's suburban he brought it back and parked it in his driveway pretty convenient he called us
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said somebody's been gone in my suburban went out there had been driven several
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hundred miles it's pretty obvious that whoever had it had partied hardy beer
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cans everywhere in it trashed out pretty bad a guy thrown up in the in the front
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seat he said well i don't guess there's anything much we can do about this i
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told him i said i think i can solve this for you pretty quick and he said no there's no way you'll ever figure it out
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i've looked in the back seat and found the uh guys texas department corrections
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inmate card his name picture where he lives and all the information that we need to to find him
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laying in the back seat along with the contents of his stomach [Music] well he looked like a dentist he acted
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like a dentist he caused untold misery like a dentist but when authorities took a closer look they found a whole set of
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false teeth claims yep for the nitty-gritty let's conduct a little cavity search in the mouth
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even his name is a mouthful italia a treadway hathorne everyone here knew him as a decent
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dentist who treated prisoners in marion county florida he prescribed a antibiotic which was
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okay and he did a pretty good job but when he was arrested at this department store for shoplifting a jaw
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jaw-dropping truth came to light he wasn't a dentist at all not only had he pulled teeth he'd pulled the wool
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over authorities eyes i don't care if he's licensed or not he was better
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dentist than anybody else i've had he seemed legit even had a private practice
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but his license was bogus and instead of this being a place of business it became a place of residence
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as you might expect having an imposter tooling around in their mouths has become a sore spot that the inmates
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don't want brush to sign it's the sheriff's fault it's their negligence
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because they didn't run a criminal check on this man to who like you said seen
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one thousand people we have are in a process now conducting an internal investigation into the hiring process of
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this individual to find out what happened where he fell through the cracks [Music]
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[Applause] [Music] in seattle it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet
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in length for the doper you're about to meet the problem wasn't concealing drugs it was
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getting rid of this stuff if possession is nine tenths of the law this guy was trying hard to be in that one tenth
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minority nice try no sale he weaseled his way into the feature we call america's dumbest excuses
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we were working an area high crime area for narcotics trafficking and i was driving back to the station
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and i saw a guy standing on the street corner obviously selling some narcotics he looked at me and i could tell he knew
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i was a cop and i could tell he was a bad guy so i pulled into the convenience store
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parking lot and as i did he had a small bag in his hand like it would hold a bottle
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he ran back towards the store and threw the bag inside a garbage can and then took off running down the
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street caught him about half a block away handcuffed and brought him back to the
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store and of course he's denying that he did anything wrong he was just jogging when
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i brought him back to the store i reached into the garbage can and removed the bag that he had thrown away
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when i looked inside it i could see it was full of rock cocaine i didn't say anything to him but the
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second i looked inside the bag he yelled at me that's not my dope i threw that away i just looked at the
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backup officer and said did you hear him say that he said yes and obviously we had a
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conviction well why do you think we call them dopes debbie what do you have to follow that
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oh a good one here's what we were talking about earlier the saga of the bread truck bandit and as we follow this
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trail of crumbs a much bigger story rises here's tonight's blue light special
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it's not your typical crime scene but this is not your typical crime it is unusual we don't haven't had too many
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thefts of items like this such as bread trucks while making a delivery to a store the
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driver came out to find his bread truck and rolled on without him that was a joke but it was no joke a thief had
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gotten his buns out of there in a hurry leading police on a chase that ended with the truck became mired in the mud
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there investigators learned the bad guy with the baked goods may have been involved in another illegal activity
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dog fights police found these cages in the backyard of the home where he had dropped off 500
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worth of bread possibly to feed dogs used in fights with evidence mounting the police had
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plenty of information to move on while the delivery man moved out after all fresh bread is fresh bread for only so
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long [Applause] [Music] coming up later a perpetrator nearly becomes a popsicle but first with news
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confirmed by low-ranking white house officials here's daniel with adc headlines
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[Music] [Applause] when an intoxicated patron was ignored by the clerk at an anchorage adult
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bookstore the customer picked up the cash register and ran out of the door ah but this sudden soul left a paper trail
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literally the cash register tape unfurled as he ran leading police directly to the man
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okay get the tape obviously this next crook failed to read the book the seven habits
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of highly effective pilferers he broke into a bank after hours but found the vault just too hard to crack hating to
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leave empty-handed he climbed onto a chair and yanked the surveillance video camera from the wall
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slight oversight okay the video recorder in the back of the bank captured a great
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close-up of this highly recognizable fellow indian thievery should have gone for the camera and
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finally an escapee from fairbanks correctional center made a choice that made it hard for him to blend into the
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general populace some years ago it seems he had had an expletive tattooed in inch
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high letters on his left cheek all right because he was unable to turn the other
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cheek to everyone he met he was soon located and recaptured no doubt he's muttering a word that's right on the tip
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of his tongue and the side of his face well on that low note we'll close the
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file on abc headlines news ripped from somewhere near the back of your local newspaper debbie
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now we're going to look at a duo of criminals in florida who were anything but dynamic in pulling off two separate
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capers both bad guys used cabs to pull off bank jobs but each adds his own unique touch of stupidity
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no question about it this guy was gutsy or very very dumb he holds up a bank wearing no disguise using a taxi as his
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getaway car he was practically begging to get caught comes back out gets in the cab right
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from everybody half the cab take him over to fort myers and drops him off the burger king on
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college parkway he took the stolen money right out of the bag and he gave it to the uh
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cab driver gave her a 20 bill and said keep the change ah but the meter was up on you buddy
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[Music] another day another robber another taxi another bank another dumb criminal
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[Applause] this robber followed the same dumb modus operandi but added his own special twist
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note the note on the counter he used his own uh check his paycheck stub that had
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his name what boat he was on the whole work so screw the number he left it all on there he just turned it over and used
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that i guess he didn't have anything perhaps he can use the back of his conviction papers to write himself a
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pardon [Music] you know it's a nice gesture to give a friend a ride when he needs one but when
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you pick him up in a stolen car and you both get arrested the gesture you give him might not be so nice you know
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meet a good samaritan who really wasn't all that good i was working investigations when we're
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investigating this guy that was committing a series of robberies [Music] he committed 20 and later admitted to
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doing about 50 and after we arrested him he was in jail in our jail and we had put out a flyer to all the
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local departments describing the car that was used and his friend drives into the parking lot
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he matched the description of the other suspect and he was arrested [Applause] what are you doing
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what are you doing driving the truck here it's a lot easier on us when they drive
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themselves in ex-friends helping friends get arrested here's the scenario you're a crook and
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you know that police are looking for you you have to hide someplace pronto where
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do you hmm needs to be bigger than a bread box but small enough that no one would think of looking for you there so
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here's how the first of two fugitives solved his problem i'm chief dan pukach with the cuyahoga
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county sheriff's office in cleveland ohio one day we were going to serve a warrant
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on an individual and two detectives went to his house [Music] sheriff's office open up
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get out of here the man came to the front door seeing that they were detectives and ran back
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into the house the detectives called for backup and when backup units arrived and we've got
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a guy in the house on a warrant mike's been watching the back paul you go to
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the back with mike tom you come with me to the front entry was gained into the house
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sheriff's office come on out they searched in the closets they searched under the sink they looked in
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the beds they looked in the attic and they looked in the basement they looked everywhere where a person
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could normally hide and they couldn't find them they proceeded to search the house for
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the second time checking behind the couches underneath the couches and chairs they still couldn't find the subject
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there was no way the man could have got out of the house without the officers saying he had to be in the house
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on the third search of the house one of the officers discovered that there was food in the sink frozen turkey hamburger
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patties stuff that normally belonged in the freezer when they opened the freezer
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there was the suspect turning blue from the cold in the freezer about 40 minutes
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by this time he gave a whole new meaning to a police officer telling a suspect to freeze he
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was one of the dumbest criminals of all time okay so the freezer hideout wasn't such
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a good idea but now here's the crook who tries a different spin on things several years ago when i was a warrant
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officer uniform i was serving criminal warrants we had a subject that we'd been trying
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to locate on several felony warrants he had a history of running from officers [Music]
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there was an occasion where i received a telephone call from an informant one morning telling me that this
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subject was at a house i talked to the person that answered the door for about 45 minutes before he allowed us to
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search the house during the time i was talking to this guy we kept hearing a door slam inside
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the residence every time the door would slam we would all get kind of nervous if the guy was
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trying to run out of the house we kept looking and looking and never did see him come out or movement
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so finally the guy that i was talking to at the front door decided i could come in and look
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we searched the house we searched the attic we looked in every closet under beds
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and didn't locate him but we kept hearing the door slam we had all the doors
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watched by an officer and still couldn't find the guy finally i was looking around in the
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laundry type room and there was a dryer sitting there and this guy was curled up inside this
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household dryer what the door sound was we kept trying to hear was him slamming the door trying to get it shut
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with his weight in the dryer it wouldn't close up the only regret i have about this arrest
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is we didn't turn the dryer on first [Music] the guy that uh i was looking for had a
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history of every time he got arrested we had about seven pictures of him wearing
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the same t-shirt and he had it on when we arrested him that day i told him he should throw that
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shirt away bad luck [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know some people say that the secret
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to success in life is to say hungry now that's just what brought down our final
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criminal of the night we found the idea of a little late night snack irresistible and that's what made this
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guy so arrestable we serve up his story for tonight's entry and we're not making
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this up [Music] the story that comes to mind was of a criminal case that we had was uh was
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this guy who broke into a uh local deli store here in cernak lake and that was done we got a call of an alarm
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going off was asylum alarm once we got this door we looked through the front window we noticed there was an
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individual behind the counter making what appeared to be a sandwich and that was done
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and at the time we thought it was just an employee so our quantum investigating a little bit further we found that there
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was forced entry to one of the back doors of the building and that was dumb we went in and uh apprehended the person
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who was hiding underneath the deli counter at the time and that was dumb if uh he
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would have just taken the cash and left the store he would probably gotten away with it
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however he decided he was a little hungry he stopped to make himself a sandwich before he left but that was
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done well we've run out of time and stories for tonight so i think i'll go home and
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make a sandwich i'm hungry good idea i think i'll check references on my dentist after this show too maybe
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make sure there's nobody in my freezer or my dryer yeah you're paranoid now man
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but you folks at home do whatever seems prudent okay but just make sure you're
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back here next week because we'll have another great lineup of america's
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dumbest criminals and if you've got a lead on the story or you just can't wait
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till next week for more state-of-the-art stupidity visit our website at www.dumbcrimes.com
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we want to thank you for joining us and extend our gratitude to the law enforcement officers who make the show
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possible every day they lay their lives on the line to keep us safe from the stupidity of would-be criminals as
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always we hope that we've all learned from others mistakes but if you haven't
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we just might see you next week on america's dumbest criminals [Music]