Dumbest Things Ever Stolen

Theft may be a common crime, but pinching a handbag or a wallet is so last year. How would you go about swiping an entire beach, an iconic historical body part or $50,000 worth of prized bull semen? Believe it or not, those are just some of the dangerous, strange, and downright dumb things people have stolen. Let's investigate some of the most dough-brained schemes the world has ever witnessed.

Glacier Ice Thief

If you’re planning a burglary, subtlety should be one of your top priorities. Still, not all criminals are cut from the same cloth and one Chilean poacher really showcased the “go big or go home” mentality when he set his sights on an entire glacier in February 2012.

The unnamed man didn’t just swipe the whole block of ice in one sitting though that would be nigh-on-impossible. Instead, he set about slowly chipping away at the Jorge Montt glacier, located in the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park in Chile in the hopes that no one would notice.

Remarkably, environmentalists initially blamed the damaging effects of climate change for the way the glacier had started shrinking at such an alarming rate. Although it seemed he was actually getting away with it, the thief’s ambitious plan was eventually foiled when police intercepted a large refrigerated truck in the capital of Santiago and discovered an estimated $4900 worth of illicit ice squirreled away inside.

Apparently, the anonymous man had intended to cut the frozen blocks down into designer ice cubes which he would then flog to hotels and bars for use in whiskeys, rums, and cocktails around the local area.

On top of the charges of theft, authorities considered adding a violation of national monuments to the charge sheet. His get-rich-quick scheme might not have worked out, but you have to admire that thief’s sheer tenacity!

Sweet-Toothed Japan Thief

Back in March 2017, 51 year old unemployed Japanese man Yasuhiro Wakashima was finally brought to justice after he tore through Tokyo and his home prefecture of Ishikawa on a pudding pilfering rampage.

Mr. Wakashima had earned himself such a reputation that he was known as "Sugar" by authorities chasing a suspect who’d been breaking into offices and raiding refrigerators to binge on their sweet treats. The hapless thief was eventually caught after the investigators hot on his tail were able to follow a trail of breadcrumbs, literally.

Apparently, Wakashima has left a calorific DNA trail in his wake in the form of the remains of the ice creams, chocolate, and various puddings he’d scoffed. Not to mention he was also caught red handed on surveillance footage raiding fridges.

Wakashima was accused of gobbling down over 250 desserts during more than 40 incidents since 2013 and confessed to causing nearly $50,000 in losses. He also admitted to pinching a pair of sandals, too.

Stealing Human Toes

In May 2018, one sneaky bandit from the city of Upper Hutt in New Zealand left the authorities scratching their heads when he made off from the scene of the crime with a rather gory souvenir: two human toes. But is it even possible to swipe someone’s body parts without them noticing?

But there’s a catch, the owner of the stolen digits had no say in the matter, because they were already dead. The bizarre crime took place at the traveling Body Worlds Vital exhibition in Auckland, which showcases a whole host of human remains that have been preserved through a process called ‘plastination’.

Basically, peoples oozing body fluids and fats are swapped with liquid plastic and their lifeless corpses are put on display. The exhibition was established by Dr. Angelina Whalley and her husband Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who invented the process in the 1970s as a way to teach students at the University of Heidelberg about human anatomy.

The 28 year old thief somehow managed to snatch the toes from one of the preserved cadavers that had been generously donated. It’s not clear how he intended to get away with it assuming he just pocketed the toes, but thankfully he was caught before he could seal the deal.

The man pleaded guilty to the toe-nabbing and was also charged with improperly interfering with the dead body of an unknown person. The craziest part is that the toes were apparently valued at around $5,500. Who knew they were in such high demand!!

Stolen Beach

Not all burglaries happen overnight, and our next one was quite an ambitious undertaking to say the least. It was July 2008, and police in Jamaica’s northern parish of Trelawny had been informed of a bizarre happening: a local beach was mysteriously vanishing without a trace!

The beach in question was located at Coral Springs and had once been a picturesque 400 meter stretch of white sand, which would soon form part of a complex resort costing $108 million. But before developers could complete the project, it seemed like their most valuable asset was being stolen from right under their noses.

The strange disappearance was deemed so important that the then Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, ordered a report into how some 500 truckloads of sand had been stolen, transported and presumably sold on without anyone noticing.

The long held tradition of people building their own homes in Jamaica means that illegal sand mining is a surprisingly common problem, because there’s such a huge demand for the valuable construction material.

As the investigation got underway though, the large volume and the type of sand taken made suspicion point toward the hotel industry, as the material was likely sold to nearby tourist hot spots hoping to achieve the “authentic” beach feel.

Despite whisperings that some of the stolen sand had been found at two north coast resorts, the complexities of the case meant no official arrests were made, who knew you could get away with stealing a whole beach!

Fajita Heist

You might think that pinching a food item is hardly the crime of the century, but when your taste for one Spanish snack snowballs into a full blown fajita heist worth $1.2 million, it’s probably time to admit that you might have a bit of a problem.

Believe it or not, that actually happened in 2017, when 53 year old Texas resident Gilberto Escamilla’s plans for the biggest Mexican themed night in with the boys were finally foiled by police. Just kidding, it was all a get-rich-quick scheme.

It all began when Escamilla was first employed at the Darrel B. Hester Juvenile Detention Center in the city of San Benito, Texas back in 2008. Over the course of the next 9 years, Escamilla was able to place orders for fajitas using county funds before selling them on for his own profit.

His masterplan was eventually thwarted in August 2017 when a delivery driver with Labatt Food Service phoned the detention center to give kitchen employees a heads up that an 800 pound delivery had just arrived at the front gates.

The bulk order immediately raised suspicions because fajitas weren’t a staple of the minors dinner menu, but the driver insisted that he had been delivering fajitas to the center since 2008.

When the trail of spicy snacks led investigators back to Escamilla, he crumbled and claimed that the whole thing had simply gotten out of control. After being fired and arrested, his house was also searched, and police found packages of the fajitas in his refrigerator. Escamilla pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to a whopping 50 years in the slammer.

Woman's Lawn Disappears

If you thought stealing a beach was a tricky undertaking, try pinching someone’s entire front yard! Denise Thompson from Edmonton, Canada prided herself on her lush green lawn which offered a sunspot for her four children and two dogs, but little did she know it was about to be cruelly snatched away.

When Mrs Thompson returned from a trip to visit her husband in Stettler, Alberta one weekend in June 2011, she entered through the back door and everything appeared as normal. That is, until she opened the blinds on the large picture window in her front room and almost fainted from complete shock. What was once her picturesque pride and joy was now nothing but a grubby plot of ugly brown dirt, with not a blade of grass in sight.

Dumbfounded, Thompson called on neighbor's who said they had seen a white truck and trailer parked at her house over the weekend, but who would do such a thing, and in broad daylight too? As it turned out, the lawn theft wasn’t perpetrated by some jealous neighbor, and was instead the result of an innocent mistake.

On Monday evening, Thompson discovered a note on her front door from Patrick Kukanu the embarrassed owner of Kupak Landscapes Ltd, who explained that his crew had simply got the wrong house on the wrong street. Thankfully, Mrs. Thompson got over her initial anger and gladly accepted Kukanu’s offer to replace the lawn for free.

The Stolen Phallus Of Napoleon

The story goes, that the historical phallus was first pilfered when Napoleon’s resentful doctor Francesco Antommarchi allegedly cut it off during his autopsy in 1821, before giving it away to a priest named Abbé Anges Paul Vignali who then smuggled it into Corsica.

From that point on, Napoleon’s most personal prized possession gained something of a mythical status. When the priest was murdered the dismembered body part then fell into the hands of a British collector in 1916 after the French government turned down an opportunity to purchase it.

Over the next 50 years the member became a public relic, and in 1927 was even put on display in New York by an American rare books dealer who purchased it in 1924.

Finally, in 1977, New Jersey urologist and Professor John K. Lattimer decided to purchase the collector’s item for $3000. Not wanting to draw attention to the stolen genitals, Lattimer then hid it under his bed until he died 30 years later, and his son Evan Lattimer inherited the modern-day relic in 2007.

Because it was not properly preserved, those who have witnessed the phallus over the years have described its appearance as a piece of leather, a shriveled eel and even beef Jerky.

As if that wasn’t flattering enough, it’s been revealed that the member measured a modest 1 ½ inches, way to humiliate a guy two centuries after his death! Still, there are rumors that Lattimer has been offered up to $100,000 for the body part, which is a pretty tidy return investment!

Einstein's Stolen Brain

On the morning of 18 April 1955, the undisputed genius Albert Einstein mumbled a few words in German and then died. The nurse on duty at Princeton Hospital didn’t speak German, so his final words were lost forever, but his words weren’t the only big loss.

Dr Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy, went a step beyond just identifying Einstein’s cause of death as a burst aorta when he sawed open his cranium, removed his brain and added it to his own private collection.

The following day, Einstein’s son Hanz Albert learned that the body in the coffin at his father’s cremation was not totally intact, and that the brain had been removed “for scientific study”.

Dr. Harvey managed to convince Hanz Albert to let him study Einstein’s brain in the hope that it might shed some light on the secrets behind his genius. But as weeks turned into months, months became years and still no scientific paper emerged, Einstein’s brain was forgotten and at last considered stolen.

Then, in 1978, young reporter Steven Levy tracked Harvey down to Wichita, Kansas where he discovered that he’d been hoarding the brain in either a mason jar or a cider box under a beer cooler for the past 25 years.

As it turned out, the brain had become something of a bad luck charm for Harvey he’d lost his job, his marriage and his career at Princeton while fixating on understanding the elusive body part. The brain had been carved into 240 tiny pieces and would be routinely sent to researchers around the world.

Nowadays, the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia is one of the two places where you can view pieces of the organ. As far as the secret to Einstein’s genius goes, it seems that part is still a secret.

Life-Size Replica Of E.T. Has Come Home

Many people have an irrational fear of having their house broken into and their most valuable items stolen. Unfortunately for 76 year old grandmother Margaret Wells, that nightmare became a reality in September 2011 when thieves raided her house in Corsham, near Portsmouth, England but what they took was unconventional to say the least.

It wasn’t her jewelry or her antique China cups that the thieves were interested in but a life size replica of Steven Spielberg’s iconic alien from the 1982 blockbuster E.T. When she discovered the scene of the crime, the pensioner was shocked to find that the three foot high sculpture her 42 year old daughter Louise had created on a stage make-up course 9 years earlier was now missing.

The replica was among a bizarre haul stolen from Well’s home which also included an iron, but good old E.T. was her biggest loss because of his sentimental value, not to mention she estimated its actual value at around $2500.

Although hope seemed lost, there was a bizarre twist in the tale in January 2012 when a beach walker found the replica washed up on a beach in Old Portsmouth and initially mistook it for a dead body. To this day neither the police nor Margaret know who stole the model or what they intended to do with it, but after all she’s just glad that E.T. did indeed phone home.

Nearly $50,00 In Bull Semen Stolen

In January 2016, the Californian city of Turlock was rocked by a headline that could make anyone do a double-take: “Nearly $50,000 in Bull Semen Stolen from Turlock Truck”. That’s right; someone had successfully made off with almost 50,000 smackaroos worth of baby-batter belonging to some Californian cattle but why?

The thing is, those weren’t any old bulls. According to farm owner John Azevedo “the genetics that these bulls have in them is out of the top 1% of the world population”. The highly valued semen of those prized bulls is collected two to three times a week and shipped to farms in California and across the world for the purpose of impregnating cattle. Apparently, over 70-75% of all cattle in the U.S. are inseminated in that way.

Turlock resident Anthony Reis had spent months of his time and labor collecting that top-notch bull semen, only for half of it to be stolen. According to reports, the thieves made off with three tanks and a transfer tank with nearly 3,500 units of sperm which they swiped from the back of Reis’ work truck late one Sunday night. For some perspective, that’s enough to potentially impregnate more than 1000 cattle.

It’s unclear how the perpetrator intended to shift the load, but the frozen sperm could be dangerous unless handled by professionals, because the tanks are filled with liquid nitrogen at about -320 degrees Fahrenheit.

Manhole Cover Theft

Forget all about Oceans 8 and allow us to tell you about the most successful heist you’ve never heard of before: the great manhole theft of 1990. It wasn’t that “great”, but it’s still pretty dumb which, is even better. It all began when police officers started noticing that manholes from Hollywood to South central LA were mysteriously vanishing at a dizzying rate.

Initially, wannabe local “detectives” pointed the finger at cosplaying mega fans of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who might have been robbing the manholes to use as shields, just like they do in the show.

Alas, the truth involved no such thing as anthropomorphic crime fighting mutant turtle brothers, but somehow lifting and stealing a total of 185 cast iron disks each weighing around 40LB is still a pretty mean feat for any puny human.

The lid was eventually lifted on that sneaky scheme when officers on a stakeout at a downtown scrap metal yard parked up aside a beat up Toyota truck in July 1990. Inside, they found exactly what they’d been searching for: more than a ton of catch basin covers and storm drain grates, concealed by layers of cardboard and broken bed frames.

The two suspects 23 year old Antonio Lopez and 19 year old Efrain de Leon Barrios, were accused of attempting to sell the hefty load for a mere $75 to the Downtown Metal Center on Long Beach Avenue.

According to scrap dealers, the thieves could make 30 times as much legally by recycling aluminum soft drink cans, because the metal was only worth 3cents a pound at the time.

Catshark Stolen From Fishkeeper's Shed

Back in 2008, 68 year old British aquatics shop owner Peter Newman noticed that the door to the converted garage where he kept a pair of rare Australian marbled catsharks and their babies was mysteriously left open.

When he peeked inside, his worst nightmare became a reality: one of his prized aquatic predators was no longer in the 5 foot tall aquarium with its finned companions.

Investigators on the scene couldn’t figure out how the suspect had managed to successfully remove the 2ft long mother shark and escape the scene without being caught, and despite their best efforts the poor stolen creature was never seen again.

Newman explained that the thief probably intended to take both sharks, but because the male is much harder to catch they likely gave up after trying to wrangle the creature and just settled for the female instead.

Apparently, the sharks are so sought after that the pair could be worth over $60,000 as a breeding pair; although how the poacher intended to shift the big fish remains a mystery. Newman even suggested he was half expecting the bandit to give a ransom demand for the safe return of the female.

Would-Be Truck Thief Grabs Bag Of Dog Poop

Sometimes you just have to settle for second best, and that’s exactly what happened in the case of this next hairbrained scheme. In March 2015, cops in the city of Des Moines, Iowa were dispatched to investigate a burglary in a local neighborhood, where a man explained that someone had broken into the driver’s side door of his truck.

The burglary had occurred at about 3AM that same day when the suspect reportedly broke the door lock open and attempted to turn on the truck, but to no avail. When they realized there was no chance they were going to make off with the vehicle itself, they searched desperately inside for something, anything worth stealing, and that’s when they saw it: a bag of dog poop.

Police were unable to identify any other witnesses or suspects to the crime, but if found they explained that the poo-thief could face third degree burglary charges. Meanwhile, the poop itself was valued at a whopping $1, let’s hope that criminal mastermind is brought to justice soon, before they can strike again!

10-Ton Bridge Stolen In Czech Republic

If this list has shown us anything, it’s that no prize is too large for the world’s dumbest thieves. Stealing a bike or even a car isn’t too much of a stretch for the old imagination, but it takes a special kind of someone to pinch an entire bridge, right?

That’s exactly what one group of opportunistic bandits managed to do in the Czech Republic in 2012 when they made off with a 10 ton pedestrian bridge linking the western Czech villages of Loket and Horni Slakov; along with about 650 feet of railway track. How did they get away with it, you ask?

Apparently, the unnamed men showed police officers, who were conducting a routine patrol some forged documents which claimed they were working on fitting a new cycling path. The group then used a crane to dismantle the bridge, which they likely intended to sell on as scrap metal.

According to the SZDC, a company managing Czech railway infrastructure the stolen metal is valued at around $6,300, while railway spokesman Pavel Halla said that “the cost of replacing the bridge will run into millions”. Sounds like bad news for any local residents hoping to get from A to B.

If you were amazed at the dumbest things ever stolen, you might want to read about the biggest things ever stolen. Thanks for reading!