Month: May 2020

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With All the Humans Gone, Goats Took Over a British Town

Andrew Stuart was minding his own business one night when something pretty extraordinary and hilarious happened: goats took over his town.

Stuart, a video producer for the Manchester Evening News, captured some footage of a lifetime recently in Llandudno, North Wales.

Here’s how it all started.

Stuart tweeted that he was inside a dark pub when he thought he saw something strange outside, so he decided to investigate.

And wouldn’t you know it… this happened.

He followed the goats for a while, because what else are you going to do right now? Who wouldn’t follow this pack around?

And after a while, he noticed that they weren’t really moseying along. They appeared to be staying put, happily gnawing on the hedges.

Yeah, this is getting good…

So, he decided to alert the authorities. But not before we posted some unforgivable puns.

The fuzz promptly took action against these out-of-control “kids” and the party was officially broken up.

But… guess what?

Just two days later, the goats were back at it again:

And they still don’t care about our human rules:

Well, one thing’s for certain. At least somebody is having a good time this spring! I wonder if they’ll be baaaaaaaaaaaaaack anytime soon?

Yeah, I know. Don’t judge me!

So what’s the weirdest animal behavior you’ve ever seen? Anything that has popped up lately now that humans aren’t hanging around that much?

Let us know in the comments, fam! We need SOMETHING to do because we’re bored AF right now.

The post With All the Humans Gone, Goats Took Over a British Town appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Talk About What Their Parents Threw out That Would Be Worth a Lot of Money These Days

My dad always says that if he would’ve kept his baseball card collection from the 1950s he’d be a millionaire.

Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way…

I don’t know if he threw those cards out or his parents did, but they’re LONG GONE.

And you know this is a pretty common story.

A lot of us had collections of all kinds of stuff when we were kids that suddenly disappeared for one reason or another.

In this AskReddit article, people talk about the things they had as kids that would be worth a lot of money…if their parents hadn’t thrown it all away.

1. Dammit, Mom!

“My brother had a bunch of first edition Pokémon cards, that he spent over a year collecting.

Mom took them away for getting in trouble at school, and they were never seen again.”

2. Oh, those…

“I had the complete collection of teenage mutant ninja turtles figures.

I packed them into a box and put them away then later when looking for them i couldn’t find them… asked my mother.. “oh those, i threw them out.. you weren’t playing with them anymore””

3. It’s not “junk”.

“About 40 Indian Arrow heads collected on my grandparents farm for years by myself and my grandfather and full sets of baseball cards from 1969-1980, my mom decided to toss out all that “junk” when I moved out for military.”

4. That is not cool.

“After my mom died, my dad met this crazy, Jehovah’s Witness woman and one thing led to another. About a month before my high school graduation we got into a HUGE fight over something  and she burned my collection of old Dungeons and Dragons
books and magic cards.

Complete collections…Every 1st edition book in good condition
signed by Gary Gygax. I guess my brother knew him at some point.

The real kicker? I rode the wave of the original magic the gathering launches back in the day, complete sets of the original series through…homelands? All burnt to a crisp. Every once in a while when i want to be depressed about never being able to retire i look up the card values.”

5. Comic books.

“Nearly all of the first 24 editions of virtually every Marvel series, from The Fantastic Four to Spiderman (including the Amazing Tales in which he was introduced) to Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. Basically all of them.

At a comic book store I was once looking at some collectors editions of those comics priced at about $1,500 to $,2400. I said to the clerk “Man, I used to have all of these.”

The clerk, whom I’m sure was Matt Groening’s model for Comic Book Man, without even looking up said in a bored voice, “Do you know how many times a day I hear that?””

6. Evil devil music!

“My mom had a collection of signed Beatles records that she threw away after she converted to Christianity because played backwards they summoned the devil or something.

For years I was hoping to inherit it when I grew up.

All I think it summoned was poverty. :/ “

7. Stamp collectors.

“Stamps.

When I was around 7 I used to stay at this friend of my parents house. She was older, and sort of a substitute grandmother. Her mother lived with her, she used to collect stamps. When she passed away the subbie gran gave me the collection.

My oldest brother had them in his room, I can’t remember why. My parents used to make a big pile in the middle of our rooms of what was messy and we had a couple of hours to put it all away. My brother faffed about and didn’t do it. So the remaining pile was thrown out. In that pile was the collection of stamps.

To this day I believe that there would have been valuable stamps in that collection considering the age of the collection, but I’ll never know.”

8. That’s kind of weird.

“I had mined 8 bitcoins at age 16. Kept them in a hard disk. When they grew in value I searched for and hard disk to know that my mom sold it to a 19 yr old for $50. I still curse my mom for doing that.”

9. Those very popular dolls.

“Barbies.

My family wasn’t super well-off growing up, but for some reason they allowed my sibling and I to amass dozens of Barbies, hundreds of clothes, two doll houses, three cars, one RV, a plane, and so fucking much else besides. When I was 12 and had outgrown it all, my dad decided it was time to pass them onto younger cousins or otherwise get rid of them.

Looking back, we should’ve held onto most of it. I had celebrity Barbies, anniversary Barbies, Barbies that came with horses, or were ballerinas, or were otherwise novel in the Barbie world. I literally spent 10 years collecting Barbies and now don’t even have a single shoe to show for it.”

10. I bet you’d like to have those right about now.

“The original Transformers in boxes. Had all main characters and nearly all of the smaller bots. Got em when I was 11, 12 or so in the mid 80s.

Left for the military and mom had a huge garage sale…”

11. That’s interesting.

“Lynyrd Skynyrd had released an album where the album cover had the band members standing in a fire. Not long after the release of this album, some of the members died in a plane crash and they recalled the albums so they could give it a more appropriate cover.

My grandpa had one of the originals and he probably could have made a lot off it… if his mom didn’t throw it away not knowing what it was…”

12. Long gone.

“A bunch of World War I coins that was thrown away because I never looked at them, I knew they were gonna be worth a fortune so I tried to not go near them because I was extremely paranoid.”

13. That’s a rough one.

“Not thrown away, but sold. I had a baseball card collection with over 200,000 cards when I was a teenager. Many HOF autographs, memorabilia cards, signed gloves and balls, a game worn jersey from the Padres 98 World Series run.

Needless to say, it was already worth a decent amount at that time. I have looked up some of the larger items in today’s retail markets, and those alone would’ve fetched around $20-25,000 USD. My mom took them when I moved to my dad’s house because she was abusive. Sold it all for a few thousand on Craigslist and kept the money.”

14. Remember those?

“My collection of Polly Pockets.

I’ve literally seen some of the ones I had worth thousands of dollars now.”

15. The vintage stuff.

“Robots, lots of robots from the 60’s, and 70’s, some were the tin type, some were plastic, some I haven’t even seen on the internet although I keep thinking someone has to have at least one left somewhere.

All in total about 25+ kinds of robots from my childhood, that my dad threw out because apparently when you turn 12, you don’t need toys. This is probably why my wife makes fun of all the junk I keep, because I never got the choice to part with them so now I horde all remaining childhood possessions.”

16. Had to do it.

“I remember when state quarters first came out, my father sent me a collection of every first edition state quarter and one time I went to show my friends awhile later and couldn’t find them, I asked my mother and she said she had to use them for laundry.

We were very poor at the time so I understand, but I was a little sad by it as well because it was one of the only things my father ever sent me.”

Ouch!

It hurts to read some of those stories, huh?

Now we want to hear from you!

Did your parents ever get rid of some items that became valuable a lot later? Or maybe you lost them or threw them away yourself?

Tell us all about it in the comments!

The post People Talk About What Their Parents Threw out That Would Be Worth a Lot of Money These Days appeared first on UberFacts.

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Psychological Tests That Yielded Fascinating Results

Psychology experiments and tests can yield some interesting insights into human and animal minds. Like any other search for scientific answers, these experiments start out with a hypothesis to try to understand something.

An AskReddit thread asked commenters to share whatever they knew about psychology exams and the types of results they had. Here are some of their best answers.

15. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

“I’m late but nobody has said it yet. The self-fulfilling prophecy studies are very important to social psychology and their findings have many real world applications.

Basically they brought together a group of kids and formed a class with a real teacher. They gave the kids a test for overall academic skill at the start of the course, but didnt really use the scores. Instead they told the teachers that a few students, picked at random, were very brilliant and scores very highly. They then observed the class for a long period of time and noticed that the teachers gave the kids they thought were brilliant much more attention. At the end of the study the kids took the test again, and they found that the kids who were randomly named brilliant at the start actually scores higher than the rest of the class. The kids, again, at the start didn’t score any different from the rest of the class, but through the self fulfilling prophecy they became the best in their class.

This obviously has tons of application in the world and especially education.”

—ehbacon23

14. The Monster Experiment

TW: childhood trauma

“The monster experiment! Although it is horrible how they left the children with mental health issues at the end, this experiment gave very good insight to how to parent a child.

On this experiment, they took groups of orphaned children and separated them into 3 groups. One was the control, the second were told they has a lips and were doing bad, and the third was told that their speech was perfect.

As the experiment went on, group 2 began developing lisps after being berated constantly. They became shy and reserved. They were scared to speak because they didn’t want to get in trouble because of their poor speaking skills. Group 3, however, had the opposite happen. They talked better, they were more willing to improve. They were encouraged to keep speaking and told that their speech was amazing and perfect.

By the end of the experiment, they had one group with no change, one group with now mentally ill children with a speech impediment, and one group with great speaking skills.

It truly shows that encouraging children is the way to go and that verbal abuse can be just as, if not more, harmful as physical abuse.”

—Buniny

13. The Monopoly Study

“The Monopoly Study by Paul Piff.

He basically brought two strangers into the lab together and had them play a game of Monopoly together. He randomly assigned one participant to start the game with twice as much money than the other and that participant also got to roll both dice to get around the board (i.e., the other participant started with half the money and could only roll one dice). At the end of the game when he asked the participants who started with more money why he won the game, they would chock it up to their excellent strategy and gamesmanship rather than the fact that they had started the game with way more resources.

It says a lot about how we deal with being born into a privileged state.”

—respectfullydissent

12. The Three Christs Experiment

“The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

Psychologist forces three people who believe that they are Jesus Christ to live together.

It does not go well.

The psychologist, Milton Rokeach, had heard of a case where two women who believed that they were Mary, mother of Christ, were forced to live together and one of them broke free from their delusion.

So he figured, three Christs…what would happen.

They were angry at each other. Often had physical fights. They eventually started getting along by avoiding the topic. He would ask them about the others and each would say that the others were crazy. That they, of course, were the real Jesus.

No cures. Some unethical stuff. Interesting though.”

—hateboresme

11. Milgram’s Small World Experiment

“I’m a huge fan of Milgram’s Small World Experiment. It is more sociology than psychology, but I still think it is really cool.

Milgram sends out 160 letters containing the name and address of a stockbroker in Boston to people in Omaha, Nebraska. They had to send it to someone they thought would get the letter closer, but they couldn’t mail it directly to the stockbroker. Interestingly, most people that sent on the letter sent it on to the same group of people on the 5th degree. It only took 6 people (hence the six degrees of separation) to arrive, on average.

It shows how interconnected our world is, even before the internet, which is happy to think about.”

—MegosAlpha

10. This Candle Trick

“If you stare into a dimly lit (i.e. candle-lit) mirror for 10+ minutes you start to see hallucinations. What individuals see tends to vary, but they’ve used this as a test to simulate schizophrenia before because some see monsters / deformities / general weird shit.

I did a variation of it for a mate at uni and completely wimped out of it. After my face started not looking like my face anymore (I had a complete dissociation) I stopped looking and just waited out the time.

Edit: I can’t find the exact study as I don’t have journal access anymore but here’s a decent summary of it in laymans terms

Edit2: This is a weird visual trick that your brain can play on you, but the effects can seem super real so maybe don’t do this if you are susceptible to hallucinations / are a wimp with this kinda shit like me

Edit3: Thanks for the gold! and yes it is basically a scientific bloody Mary.”

—mitzimitzi

9. Red is Influential!

“The influence of the colour red in sports: Judges were shown a video of a Tae Kwon Do match and awarded more points to the red competitor (versus the blue competitor). When the colours were digitally reversed, judges awarded more points to the other, now red, competitor.

Since there’s a lot more interest than I expected, here’s some more info: Red may be a signal of dominance as reddened skin is associated with higher testosterone (or possibly higher fertility in women). Wearing red may induce intrinsic psychological effects which increase dominance in addition to altering the perception of others. Researchers found that putting red leg bands on birds increased dominant behaviour, as they took the “lion’s share” of the food.

For my psychology degree dissertation, I presented photos of men to be rated on a scale of Friendly (0) to Threatening (10). Men received a higher threat score if I photoshopped their t-shirt to be red :).

8. The Negativity Bias Experiment

“There have been some experiments conducted, but the negativity effect/negativity bias is really sad to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

It basically says that negative things have a greater emotional and psychological toll on our health than positive/neutral things. So you got an A on a test, that’s great. But you totally fail a test, and the world crumbles and it’s a total disaster. A hundred things can go right and work perfectly throughout the day, but it goes totally undetected in our minds. Then someone cuts us off in traffic and we fume and rage. I learned about this theory almost three years ago and think about it all the time. Reminds me to appreciate and notice the many little things in my day that do go right.”

—omgyoucunt

7. Mice Have Empathy

“Mice were put on two sides of a wall with a door in. Only the right mouse could open the door. Slowly, they filled the left mouse’s room with water and eventually when right mouse saw them in danger, they opened the door. However, mice that had previously been on he left side and were now on the right (mice who had previously been “wetted”) opened the door considerably faster because they knew how unpleasant it was to be in the other scenario. Basically mice have empathy

Link here: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150514-rats-save-mates-from-drowning.”

6. The Car Crash Experiment

“The Car Crash Experiment.

It demonstrated that the way investigators word a question has an immediate effect on the subject’s memory of an event. It was part of a suite of studies by Elizabeth Loftus (with various other co-researchers) that began to call in to question the veracity of eyewitness accounts.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html.”

5. This “Drunk” Experiment

“One time I participated in a paid research experiment. I was basically tricked into thinking I was drunk.

I was placed in a room with 2 other people and we were instructed to drink vodka with cranberry juice over a period of time while we socialized. After we drank I was placed in a room where I had to read some flashing words on a computer. I felt pretty drunk at this point. When the researcher came back into the room he gave me my car keys and said I was never actually given alcohol. He briefly told me that because I was anticipating drinking for this experiment that my brain had tricked me into feeling the effects of being intoxicated.

I immediately snapped out of it and was completely amazed at how I felt.”

—Extrasherman

4. This Conformity Experiment

“Solomon Asch’s experiment on conformity. He set up a test wherein he would show 3 lines of different lengths to 5 or 6 individuals (I forgot the exact number) who had to state which line was the longest of the 3. The thing is, only the last individual is the participant and the others are actors paid to answer in a specific manner. For the first few questions, they choose the correct answer, but later on they start choosing the wrong one. The participants are conflicted as to whether they will say the correct answer or conform to the wrong answer as to not be judged by others or due to self-doubt of their own answers. In the end, most do conform.

It’s really interesting since it shows how powerful conformity is in the face of doubt, up to a point that some even question their own sanity during the test.

Another variation of the experiment also had interesting results. It had the same set up with 5 individuals with the last person being the participant. However, this time some of the actors say the wrong answer while 1 actor says the correct one. There was an increase in participants who would choose the correct answer and avoid conformity. It shows how much doubt one can have on oneself when alone, but be brought back to self-confidence when they find outside support.

Edit: Conformity in participants might be caused by either being afraid others’ judgement or due to self-doubt.”

—gerik_sinovercos

3. Misattribution of Arousals

“Aron and Dutton (1974) – Misattribution of arousal.

Men who had just walked across bridge (either steady or unsteady) were approached by a female psychology student, posing to do a project on the effects of exposure to scenic attractions on creative expression. The men had to complete a questionnaire and write a short dramatic story about a picture she provided and she gave them her phone number if they had more questions. Men who walked across the shaky bridge were more likely to call her up because they misattributed the arousal from the bridge to the woman.

TLDR: watch a horror movie on the first date.

Edit: grammar. Sorry about the confusion.”

—memesandreams

2. The Phantom Limb Experiment

“The phantom limb experiment is pretty fascinating.

Basically, you can be tricked into feeling something that’s not there.

Here’s an article about the experiment.”

—elee0228

1. Why We Expect Good or Bad Things to Happen To People

“Not just one experiment, but a whole thesis and series of works supporting it:

According to the Just world Fallacy we expect good or bad things to happen to people for a reason and go to pretty interesting length to make up for the lack of justice. Like someone winning the lottery and us thinking they deserve it.”

—NS-11A

These psychological experiments showed us some interesting facets of animal and human behavior.

Have you heard of other experiments that prove we’re a little weirder than we thought?

Chime in with this insight in the comments!

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Clean hands assured

Claude Davis of Melbourne, Florida obtained a patent for this curious device in 2000. The gadget attached to bathroom doors. Whenever someone turned the handle to open the door, the gadget would spray their hand with dye. This, reasoned Davis, would encourage people to wash their hands, to remove the dye. He imagined his invention […]

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When Tom Hanks was touring…

When Tom Hanks was touring the White House, he learned that the press corps didn’t have a coffee pot so he donated one then, and again in ’10 and ’17. “Keep up the good fight for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Especially for the truth part” is the message that accompanied the ’17 machine.

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People Share Their Dumbest Ideas That Actually Worked

Sometimes, dumb ideas really do the trick!

I can’t say it’s ever really happened to me, but it definitely does for some folks out there.

And you’re about to read about them!

Here are some very entertaining stories from AskReddit users.

1. Wow! That’s crazy!

“In my freshman year of college, my grades were really not great. And my parents were really strict about getting good grades. When my dad asked to see my grades, I panicked and did the inspect command on the computer where you can change type faces on the screen to read different words and letters.

I changed all of my shitty grades to good grades. My dad was so happy that I did “good” my first year of school. He asked me to print my results. I did, and turns out he had to send them to our car insurance company for a “good student discount”. Ultimately, I committed insurance fraud by accident. But I got the discount.”

2. You look weird, but it works.

“Wearing a motorcycle helmet while snowblowing.

I did it because i missed riding, it kept my face warm and when snow would fly back at me the visor would protect me.”

3. A dangerous idea.

“A storm broke a limb on a tree hanging over my house in my back yard, but it was still hanging on by a few splinters. I didn’t want it to fall, and it wasn’t in a place where I could use my ladder to get to it.

So I found some rope, tied a brick to it, threw the brick and rope over the limb, made a crude rope swing, and swung and pulled at the branch until it finished breaking.

It wasn’t until I was using the chainsaw to cut it up that I realized how many times during my stupid idea I could have easily hurt or even killed myself.”

4. That’s pretty good!

“Our power was out due to a storm. I had a campstove to use for boiling water to make a coffee pour-thru, but I couldn’t use my electric grinder for the coffee beans. I tried fashioning a mortal and pestle but it was taking too long.

So, I put the coffee beans in a couple of ziplock bags, placed the bag right behind a car tire, then ran over it back and forth a couple of times to crush the beans. Worked like a charm.”

5. V.I.P.

“A friend and I once snuck 15 people into the Warped Tour by giving them some bracelets from a party supply store and clipboards full of paper.

Walked up to the side gate and said we were with Rock The Vote. The security guard waved us right in.”

6. You’re hired!

“I forgot to bring a resume to a job interview, but I had an index card in my bag. I cut the index card in half and wrote my name, my contact info, and “creative problem solver” in my best handwriting, and gave a copy of my “business card” to both the interviewers.

I got the job.”

7. This is great.

“When I was young and broke I bought a sofa from a used furniture store. I had no way to take the sofa home.

I went to a used car lot a couple of blocks away and took a truck for a test drive…”

8. Just like on TV!

“I’m stuck on a cliff, but if I jump at a really sharp angle at that gravel field, I could just slide down there and be fine, just like in TV!“

Every time I think about this I am amazed I’m not either flattened by a rock, or impact against something.

Childhood really is just the tutorial level sometimes.”

9. Congratulations!

“In college I was taking a class that required me to purchase an online textbook and workbook that was registered under your name, basically ensuring that each student would have to buy a new online copy each semester instead of buying used textbooks.

I had a friend who took this class a semester before me so we came up with the idea to message customer service and explain that I had recently gotten married (so my last name had changed) and I legally changed my first name from [my friend’s first name] to [my first name] and I would need them to change it in their system.

It totally worked and the rep even congratulated my on my marriage.”

10. This is smart.

“Real estate told me I had to have the carpets professionally cleaned (wasn’t in the contract) or I’d lose my $800 bond.

I did some research and found out I could become an accredited carpet cleaner as there are no official licencing boards in my state.

So, I did what any sane person would do. I paid the $85, did the online course and got my certificate. Registered a business name, ABN etc etc. (all free)

Handed the property management a copy of my accreditation and an invoice for services.

I became a professional carpet cleaner and launched a vacate cleaning business that is still going 6 months later.

I did clean the carpets. They claimed I didn’t and required a professional cleaners invoice as proof. So I gave them the proof.

I did not charge the real estate agency, it was a copy of the invoice they claimed to require.

I do professional house keeping and cleaning for vacating a property at the end of lease to enure you get maximum bond back.

I help people who are being unfairly treated by their property management and advise them on what steps to take in regards to cleaning, repairs etc

-With the return of the bond, and some smart shopping, I was able to purchase my own equipment to continue the job, I then claimed those costs back on tax.”

11. Blind luck.

“This idea could’ve easily gotten me fired if it went wrong.

I was working as art-director at an animation studio, making videos for clients. One client was especially pesky about the use of yellow in the background. They wanted it to be that of their logo, which was this horrible neon-piss yellow.

We advised against it, but after numerous calls we had to cave and gave a version with that colour. They hated it, and asked for a change. What followed were 12 versions with numerous calls in between tweaking the colour over and over.

Eventually I got tired of it and just sent the original version again, I didn’t even bother to rename the file. The client said “this looks exactly the way I wanted, thank you”!

How that ever went right I still have no idea.”

12. When in Rome…

“Dressing like a redneck to pick up chicks. Went to college in the south but the guys there were all very preppy. I thought because a lot of the girls grew up in the south, they would be drawn to more of a redneck vibe that not many people on campus had. so I bought a camo fishing hat.

Literally had three girls start conversations with me that day.”

13. Very satisfying.

“There was a swarm of hornets that had made a nest under the front of our porch with only one specific narrow entry in or out.

Spray wouldn’t work and it was right under our front door, so had no way to keep exterminating them.

Then I realized “why not whirring blades of metal?”. We DID have an old 50s metal fan and I could maybe blow them away from the entrance so they had no way to get in.

The unanticipated effect was that it worked, though after a few hours had created a Civil War battlefield of dead or dying hornets piling up like a zombie tower in World War Z. Every few moments you’d hear “thunk” as another hornet fell into the trap.

So satisfying.”

14. Fakin’ it.

“Was really REALLY desperate to leave past employer after 15 years. Had been applying and interviewing and striking out. Finally got an interview at a place where (at the time) I felt, “meh, I am not really sure this is right for me, but anything is better than where I am at.”

Instead of prepping for the interview, rehearsing answers, etc…I pulled an “office space.” I was cocky, brash, unconcerned, made it seem like I was happy where I was at and didn’t really care if I got the job or not.

They called me back the next week and I waited a week to return their call. Same deal with the second interview. When they offered me the job, I hemmed and hawed, said I needed to think about it really hard, and that it was a “big move” for me, etc., etc. I came back and demanded well over $15,000 above what they were offering in salary. They accepted.”

15. Just like Costanza.

“It probably wouldn’t work in this day and age but back when I was young I was tired of retail and wanted an office job. I just lied my ass off and pulled a total George Costanza what with friends coached to answer their phones as a business and such.

Got hired as an admin assistance and been steadily moving up since.”

Color me impressed!

I guess I’ll have to give more dumb ideas a chance once in a while.

How about you? Have you had any dumb ideas that actually ended up working out?

If so, please tell us about them in the comments!

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Police Officers Talk About the Smartest Criminals They’ve Ever Encountered

It’s been a permanent fixture of film, television, and literature for years. The cunning criminal who is so bright that they routinely outsmart the police and make them look foolish.

But this phenomenon exists in real life too, believe it or not.

AskReddit users shared their stories about especially smart criminals.

Let’s see what they had to say.

1. That is insane.

“My favorite was the guy who stole a post office mailbox off the street, repainted it, and then put it next to the night deposit box at a bank.

And hung an out-of-order sign on the deposit box. All the businesses came along and dropped off their deposits in the mailbox.”

2. Ahhhhh, the GPS.

“I worked crime scenes. This guy had attached GPS to the bottom of peoples cars who owned houses, he wanted to rob.

He did it to ensure they wouldn’t be showing up while he was ransacking the place.”

3. Almost got away with it.

“I remember an officer telling me about a B&E alarm he and his team responded to. No one was there to report the alarm, it must have been a security monitoring company that called.

When police showed up, everything seemed normal, most lights were off, and there was an employee still working. Explains he was there working late and must have set off an alarm.

They almost believed him until he said “uhh” before saying the name of the company he worked for. After that it was downhill but with a little more research he would have pretty much gotten away with it.”

4. On parole…

“There’s one guy I recently dealt with who is on parole. I stopped him in my city after he was looking to buy drugs (usually people come from all over to buy drugs and then leave). I issue him a warning and let him go as it’s pretty common and he sang like a bird regarding the people he was trying to buy from.

Anyway, the next day, I got a call from his parole officer who says he was alerted the guy was pulled over and wanted to verify that It was his guy that I stopped. I’m a little confused at first but he goes on to say that the day before, he was scheduled to meet with him but he had an excuse and bailed.

His excuse was that he was in the hospital. Well when he spoke with him the following day, he was able to provide documentation that he had entered the hospital day 1 and had left day 2. Well I had stopped him at 115 in the morning and after looking at the picture, it was 100% him.

Turns out the guy had checked in then out of the hospital on day 1, then in and out again on day 2. He then re arranged half the paperwork to make it look like he was in the hospital overnight which would make my car stop of him appear like I mixed him up with someone else as well as give him a valid excuse to miss their meeting.

Not sure what’s gonna happen to that guy but I thought it was pretty clever.”

5. It’s cold outside.

“Worked at a jail. After getting off work, I watched an ex inmate (homeless) being released, he walked over to a patrol car, looked me in the eye, and the elbowed the window in. He was walked back to the entrance and re-booked in. It was middle of January. He didn’t want to get too cold.

To the people talking about “Can’t break car windows.” That’s true. Also depends on the car. The patrol car they used was specifically old model. Used more for the perimeter of the jail unless other patrol cars were in the shop. Those windows had been replaced so many times. Idk if it’s the same material or what.”

6. The great state of Costco.

“A friend of my brother moved to Israel where for a period of time it was/is acceptable to drive with an American driver’s license.

He was pulled over for speeding, and when asked for his license, gave the officer his Costco card (Costco is a membership-based retail warehouse in the US and a few other countries. The exchange apparently went something like this: Officer: “Costco? What is Costco?”

Friend: “It’s the state I’m from.”

Officer: “That sounds made up.”

Friend: “There are lots of states you probably haven’t heard of. Have you heard of Arkansas? How about Idaho?”

Officer: “I guess not…”

Friend: “Well I’m from the small state of Costco.”

The officer didn’t have a response and wound up writing the ticket to someone with a Costco driver’s license. Friend framed the ticket and still has it hanging on his wall.”

7. It all adds up.

“One guy would print barcodes, bring them into home depot and stick them on merchandise in the $100 range. When scanned the items came up around the $10 range. Putting random barcodes on things isnt really illegal and super hard to notice. Guy two would come in an hour later and buy the underpriced stuff. Complete plausible deniability. They would then sell the stuff on Ebay.

Only reason they got caught is because the guy with the barcode printer/software cut the second guy out of the operation so guy 2 stole a bunch of barcodes, put them on the merchandise and paid for it immediately afterwards. He then proceeded to rat on the first guy and spilled the beans they had been doing this on a weekly basis for over four years.

Because we could only pin the one case on him, the burglary was dropped down to a pretty theft and he walked away with a few days in county and a small fine. Dude probably took homedepot for tens of thousands over the years.”

8. Fraud!

“I have a nice story from insurance/debt collectors.

There was this guy who was already in heaps of debt. Like more than a lifetimes worth of debt.

He proceeded to file several policereports for identity theft up to the point that he got protected from financial checkups – It was a temporary measure that were given to repeated identity theft victims. At the same time he had reported fake income to the IRS for the last couple of years to between 40 to 60 millions depending on the year.

So when he applied for credit cards and loans, they were unable to check his financial credit (Due to the identity theft protection) but they checked his tax returns which showed he had a massive income.

Got his loans and credit cards – emptied them out and left the country.”

9. Very clever…

“A while back, there was a series of thefts along the bus lines in my country. People’s things kept missing from one city to the next, and nobody had any idea what happened as things were presumably safe in the bottom of the bus which nobody except the driver had the access to.

What happened?

Apparently there were two guys, one of whom was really small. You get where this is going. The big guy would put the little guy in a suitcase, buy a ticket to somewhere, load him up with the rest of the luggage, and enjoy the ride, while the little guy went out, stole people’s electronics, jewelry, cameras and whatnot, then returned to his suitcase until the ride was over.

Not really sure how they caught them, but it was pretty amusing to read about, and i found the whole thing clever enough.”

10. This guy wasn’t messing around.

“There was an incident in Fargo ND where a guy wanted to steal electronics equipment. The store had plenty of alarms on it and generally cutting an alarm triggers an alarm so instead he cut ALL the alarms. This was before cellphones were really widespread and alarms were usually just connected to the phone line.

He found an access point to one of the phone companies big trunk lines (correction: 9 access points). Massive thick copper cables with tens of thousands of lines running through them. He cut through the whole thing with a circular saw, knocked out phone service to most of the town and robbed an audio store during the ensuing chaos.

There were no leads until a tip came in from another town where he’d pulled something similar. They hadn’t been able to pin that to him but had strong suspicions and he’d relocated to Fargo. So the cops pay him a visit. He refused to let them in because they didn’t have a warrant so the cops left to get one without leaving anyone to watch him and he split. When they came back they found the saw coated in copper dust and a lot of the stolen stuff.

He was in the wind for a while but even after he got caught he had another card to play. While being transported between prisons he used a key he’d made to unlock his shackles and climbed out the roof vent of the bus.”

11. In broad daylight.

“20 years ago a guy on Australia’s Gold Coast got away with a bank robbery in broad daylight.

He cased the bank for a while and discovered a pattern of the bank manager arriving about 30 minutes before anyone else each morning where he would leave the front doors unlocked so staff could help themselves in without a key or needing to wait for the boss to come and let them in.

One morning the crook dressed himself up for a busy day of office work and waited for the bank manager to arrive. As the manager was unlocking the doors he made his move, entering the building and threatening the manager with a gun. He got all the details he’d need to access the vault and so forth and then tied the manager up and stuffed him in his office.

When the staff arrived he told them that the manager had called in sick and that regional office had sent him in to do the open shop thing and no one batted an eyelid. This bank had a small walk in vault that normally only held about 30-50k on any given day but old mate had timed his robbery for the morning after business banking day when all the local small businesses would make their end of week deposits and reportedly got a score of close to 250k.

Once the vault was open he pulled his gun out and invited all the staff to enter the vault and locked them in. By this stage the bank was due to be open so when he went to leave there were a number of customers waiting to get inside to do their banking.

He told them all that there had been an issue with the computers and that the tech team had estimated it would take about 30 minutes before the issue would be resolved and that they couldn’t open until then.

Then he got into his car and drove straight to the airport and flew to Hong Kong and then disappeared.

To my knowledge the cops never caught him and never managed to find the money – they knew he’d have had to leave most of it in Australia somewhere because you can only take 10k aud in cash in any currency out of the country before customs pulls you into their interview rooms so the assumption was that he had to have an accomplice here who would funnel the money to him slowly over time.”

12. Never got caught.

“Several years ago in Cape Coral FL, a man waited on a sidewalk in front of a Publix grocery store and used a taser on an armored car guard carrying too bags of money.

A get away driver in a car with stolen tags pulled up, taser guy and money bags get in and they took off. Never caught.”

13. Small-town crime.

“Probably one of the smartest robberies in my small city.

One of the main streets is cut into a hillside and, as a result, there is a very steep and quite tall concrete-covered bank immediately behind the buildings. Between two buildings there is a gap that was filled at the street-end by an ATM.

To access it for filling, the security staff went through the next door building, out a side door and into the gap, which had the ATM at one end and the steep bank at the other. On the Friday before Christmas, when the ATM was to be filled to the brim, one of the robbers abseiled down the bank at night into the gap and waited for the guys to arrive to fill the ATM (they came early in the morning).

As they came through the door into the gap, he held them up, took the money, and took off through the building to an accomplice waiting in a van on the main street. Then the van took off on the main road out of the city and vanished.

After a big search, the police finally found the burnt-out van. Turned out the gang had driven it up a gorge road and had two other accomplices in cars at the top and bottom of the gorge who simultaneously drove really slowly into the gorge and held up the traffic so that no one was there to see them when they turned off down an access road into some bush.

They ended up being caught, because one of the gang was a former employee of the security company.”

14. Working the system.

“I worked with this one guy who had a lengthy record. He had a system for getting released if he got caught. After committing a crime, if the police were in pursuit and he knew he was about to be cornered, he would act insane.

His girl would play along with it telling the police that he was off his medication. The police would arrest him but then send him to a mental ward with papers instructing the ward to release to police once he was cleared. Once he was in the mental ward, he would cause a distraction that would make the person attending the desk with the file cabinet to leave said cabinet.

He would then crawl to the file cabinet, look for his “release to police” papers, and then would literally eat the papers. When the psych evaluators decided that he was stable enough to be released, there would be no instructions to send him to the police, and he would be released to the general public.

He did this about 10 times until police officers noticed him back on the streets. This stunt forced the state to change their procedure for detaining mentally unstable suspects.”

As someone who is pretty obsessed with crime, these stories were very interesting to me.

Now we want to hear from you!

Have you run across any wily criminals in your day?

Maybe as a cop, a lawyer, or in some other capacity?

Tell us about them in the comments!

The post Police Officers Talk About the Smartest Criminals They’ve Ever Encountered appeared first on UberFacts.