“Pure Genius”: 41 Criminal Masterminds That Impressed Everyone

Worked as trainee at an electrical company southern Sweden many years ago. The company noticed a unusual power loss between to nodes in their power grid, couldn’t figure it out for years. Eventually they got suspicious about a local farmer and could see that the loss of power correlated with him running his watering system. Turns out he’s buried a big coil of copper wire beneath the high voltage power line. By carefully crafting it he was able to induce just enough power to drive his watering system.

My father ran film developing businesses and photography studios back in the 80s and 90s. That industry didn't age well into the 21st Century😄

He hired a young employee who was a brilliant salesman and the business grew into School pictures and wedding bookings soared as did military events and running the color lab for several local newspapers. This guy could sell anything but was a horrible photographer and couldn't run a lab, so he stayed in sales end of the business...

He offered to have his tax guy to the business taxes as a steep discount, so they changed tax preparers. Immediately after the quarterly employment and business taxes went off, this guy flipped. He refused to sell, yelled at customers, didn't answer the phones, and opened film canisters, spoiling 2 weddings from the previous weekend which had to be restaged and reshot. Any idea how much is costs to restage an entire wedding?? Imagine buying 2 complete weddings and paying to rent all new tuxes, rent the same space and pretend to do the wedding all over to get photographs including buying airfare for family across the country.

We fired the guy and were immediately sued. He paid his accountant on the back end to refile taxes as a partnership, not a sole proprietorship and then took claim to half the assets of the business. He walked out with quarter million in photographic equipment and color lab machines, sold his assets for cash and disappeared.

We found out much later that the same man, his accountant and his attorney pulled the same scam with a car stereo company, a construction company, a muffler shop and a Taco franchise over the next 10 years. Very methodical and long game scam...get in, get your accountant to get the business, file as a partnership without them knowing, get fired and sue... He did that again and again, moving cities but keeping his attorney and accountant paid on the backend.

A few years back my elderly neighbors home robbed. Her husband had just passed away and the obituary was in the paper with showing times and time the burial ceremony was to start. These low life’s looked up her husband’s address in the phone book and knew exactly what time their house would be un occupied. They took absolutely everything of value from this lady on the day she was putting her husband in the ground. And they never caught them.

Guy found out that when a gas station lost it's satellite connection, it automatically accepted all credit cards, and would presumably process them later. So, he climbed on the roof and covered the dish with foil to force it to lose connection then made charges on a card that was cancelled.

Not my story but my dad's and I don't remember all the details.

This happened maybe 3 decades ago. My dad worked bank robberies and other financial fraud cases. Most criminals he caught were not very smart at all the way he tells it but there was a group of guys who got involved in some kind of payroll scheme that managed to successfully and anonymously embezzle a LOT of cash. Like I said I don't remember all the details but it involved skimming a few cents off of each paycheck from tens of thousands of checks at a time on each payday for some big company (companies?). This was only possible because it was before the age when everything was digital as a given, and they got access to the physical pay rolls, modified them, and then paid themselves out the difference somehow so that everything still added up on the books and nobody was likely to notice the 1 or 2 cents missing from their own check.

These guys had codenames inspired by their d&d group like "wizard," "troll," etc.

Well some years after my dad catches these guys he is called in for an interview for another embezzlement case of some kind. They're doing the good-cop-bad-cop routine and my dad was supposed to play bad cop. But the guy looked familiar, and kept glancing at my dad nervously like he thought he was familiar too, so he just stayed quiet until a few minutes later it clicked and he says, "Hey wait a minute I know you -- you're the troll!"

The other agent in the room at that point just sat back while my dad, who was supposed to be bad-cop, just starts shooting the s**t with this guy, buttering him up, reminiscing about what a good case that was and how good a job this guy and his friends did before they were caught. Got the information they needed and closed another case.

A very clever criminal was stealing electricity for his nightclub in Liverpool, the power company knew something was happening because as soon as this guy took over their usage was about a quarter of the previous owner.

They finally sent an old guy out to check the meter for problems. He discovered that they'd fitted a pressure switch on the door so that when it was opened the meter turned as normal, but as soon as you closes it the meter would stop turning.

Two years they'd been investigating before he was caught out.

A bank in my hometown was robbed by a group of individuals during a historic snowstorm. we got ~12ft in two days, and early in the storm the bank was still open. Couple people just walked in masked with guns, robbed the place and escaped on foot. Police response time was about 45 mins at best, and by the time they arrived on scene the tracks were gone. Longshot, but pure genius.

Many many years ago, probably 20-ish, my Dad used to own this company and one of his employees died in a car accident.

In the next few days my Dad received the work logs and books and things that this guy would have kept with him, and that’s when my Dad realized this guy was doing “offline transactions”
(What they had to do when a client needed something after hours)

I’m not exactly sure how it worked, it was something to do with the physical receipt layout but he would overcharge X amount for the item, get to work and input Y amount paid and have the correct receipt, and pocket the difference.

He had been doing this for years and years and my Dad didn’t realize. Not exactly the smartest but he was never caught.

My Dad decided not to say anything to the family or anything like that.

Totally not a cop but

Guy bought a truck and needed plates but was on the run and couldn’t get things legally.

Drove around until he saw a truck like his and wrote down the plate.

Stole multiple plates with similar numbers and letters. Combined them into one plate using tin snips, gorilla glue, and patience.

Drove around with a clean plate for months before anyone noticed. Couldn’t even tell what he did unless you were inches away from it.

I was an assistant manager at a little deli/corner store for a few years and one of the employees bragged that he was getting a bag of weed a week from the store for free... Not to me but to other employees.

I couldn't figure out how... the numbers always matched up. He was also really sucessful with one of our couponing programs.... It took me a while to figure out that our POS system would take the coupon without the upc being scanned... In otherwords... the coupons were esentially cash. He was cashing out ~$80 a week in coupons. The kid was pretty smart... I only found out when I was doing rhe inventory and the books the same week... I saw that we sold a ton of icecream... and thought geeze I am gonna have to restock the c**p outta that... then realized that it was fully stocked and put 2 and 2 together.

My old boss was a major thief with 2 of his close friends in my small city. They all worked normal jobs at areas where they could talk to people (waiting tables and things like that).

Every year when Christmas or another break like holiday they would case out frat/sorority houses and while everyone is seeing family, they'd clean em out. Would go by storage units and look for things like cigarette butts around them and assume people probably practice playing music and store instruments there. Since clearly they're there often enough to hang around and smoke.

One of em got pinched when he tried to sell an expensive guitar at a music shop and it was the shop owners stolen guitar. Thinking quickly he said how he had bought the guitar from a guy named lets say Steve. Gave the cops all the info since he had been working with Steve at the restaurant waiting tables. Well Steve actually just died about a week before in a car wreck so no charges on anyone.

They had ATV's, motorcycles, every video game console, TV's, instruments, etc. When they were finally busted selling a four wheeler to a sheriffs daughter, the other detective who investigated Steve told em that was a pretty clever idea sending them after a d**d man.

Then they all went to prison for about 4 years.

Not a cop, but a newspaper reporter covering ongoing scams involving crooked tow truck drivers and body shops.

It’s a scam so lucrative that tow truck drivers are burning rival trucks and gunning each other down to protect their turf.

Body shops pay tow trucks kickbacks to bring collision tows, which they’ll use to bill insurance companies for unneeded or overblown repairs.

Toronto-area uses a “first available” system for accident tows, where the first tow truck on the scene gets the tow, which could be worth hundreds.

So what they’re doing is targeting high-end cars and hiring people to trigger collisions with stolen cars — all with an affiliated tow truck conveniently around the corner.

Even cops are getting into it — I wrote about one Toronto cop currently under suspension who would not only tip off tow trucks about collisions (Toronto encrypts their police radio band) he would sell police radios to tow truck drivers and either report them as lost, or have an underground radio tech on payroll to clone the radio.

He also operated an online service that streamed Toronto police radio transmissions online for paying subscribers, owned several tow trucks that he leased out, and even owned a car rental business.

The scam fell apart after police north of Toronto did a traffic stop on a tow truck and discovered a police radio.

That radio had the same ID number as one currently in service in the same division the cop worked in, and the police radio shop determined the tow truck driver’s radio was genuine, but the one in police circulation was actually an illegal clone.

My licence plates were swapped with a car of the same make and model that was stolen. They then used their stolen car with my plates on them in a police chase. Nearly got my husband arrested for it until I showed them my car at the train station with the stolen cars plates on them. Cops were surprised they were that clever. Still got caught in the end though.

My company does orders over the phone, and offers refunds to customers who aren't happy with the service. Order-taking employee would take an order, process the customers card, and then at the end of their shift "refund" that customer, but put the refund on a debit card of theirs. The money would show up in their account immediately and our end-of-night books would balance, so it took us a while to catch this. We did catch it because we track refunds as a measure of customer satisfaction and refunds were up that quarter so we started looking for the reasons by calling customers and asking about it. "what refund? I didn't get a refund". fired him, pressed charges, he pled guilty to theft did 20 days in the county jail.

Fast forward two years. I'm training a new manager. "heather, here's how this works, you gotta watch out for this". She got it. A few weeks later I get a call from our card processor. "hey, we're seeing refunds to cards that haven't done business with you and its against our terms of service". I get the times and dates of the transactions, grab heather, and say "hey, we got a problem. can you see who was on shift tuesday at 3:30, wednesday at ..." "sure, i'll get back to you tommorow". So I'm on my way home and I get a 2nd call from our processor. "we've got the name on the account that is receiving the funds. Do you know heather?"

So I walked into her office the next day, and closed the door, and said "heather, you got anything you want to tell me? " She confessed, said that she did it once to see if it worked, and then kept doing it because it was easy. she'd stolen about $6k before we caught on, which made it a felony. this was a woman who I was paying $80k/year in the mid-90s, single mom, smart.... I figured it was d***s. I told her to take the rest of the day off and we'd talk about it in the morning.

Called the police, had them arrive a half-hour before she got there, the officers were in the conference room when I escorted heather in. she confessed to them, ended up pleading guilty to felony theft. don't think i have to mention that i fired her that day.

I did ask her why and she really didn't have a good answer. I still don't know to this day.

Not a cop but was a coworker to one. Worked in the cage at a casino where all the money is. One girl, pretty new, kept having variances. Her drawer would be off $1-2k fairly often so they started watching her more closely. We weren't supposed to help friends or family but she would and we're supposed to count out by hand the bills. Well she ran the bills through the jetscan and handed the stack to her sister. Well her drawer was $10k off. Turns out she put a $1 bill on top of a strap of $100's and slid it to her sister. Needless to say she was caught.

She was also stupid enough to brag to other coworkers about how she'd soon have enough money to travel and start a business when the day before she's complaining about being a poor single mom. How obvious could she be??

Years back I worked as a district employee at a large grocery chain. I was in charge of loss reduction. During a meeting at a store I was talking to a store manager about a report he is supposed to print weekly and check for high dollar returns from employees. He told me he doesn’t really look over it he has his bookkeeper keep an eye on it. My response was “what if it’s your bookkeeper that is showing on the report”. A month later the bookkeeper was taken out in handcuffs and the store manager was fired.

Former crime reporter here.

One of my first stories: large electronics wholesaler in Upstate New York, large truck backs to the loading bay at the start of the day. This is when cellphones were not as ubiquitous as they are today.

Five guys jump out, lock all the employees in the lunch room, use the forklift on site, fill a semi with high-end electronics, drive away. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise stolen in less than half an hour.

Employees eventually break out, call cops. Truck is long gone. Never caught, some of the electronics eventually turned up in NYC.

Story two: homeowners in a luxury house in a good neighborhood. They're on vacation.

Moving truck pulls up, legit markings, guys in jump suits empty the entire home. Couture clothing, tens of thousands of jewelry, high-end appliances, the works.

Apparently this was a stolen truck and a team of smart, opportunistic thieves. No one questioned the theft, because the truck was an actual moving truck.

I used to work for a retail chain. One of the store managers in a different state was found to be ripping to company off. He would process a transaction for a large ticket item, such as a TV, print 2 receipts and give the reprint to the customer. He’d then process a refund for the item via his receipt at a later date. When stocktake came, he was fudging the figures in the reports.

He got caught out by a security guard who became suspicious of the way the manager would act during the refund process.

Usual suspect, gets arrested in a light credit card fraud operation. While searching the house detectives find a handwritten book titled *My Life in Crime*, which provided firsthand accounts of many crimes he had committed over the years. Some known, others unknown . Anyway, with that kind of confession sitting around where a cop might find it, you'd think he was stupid.

Soon after his arrest, before trial, he escaped custody; he jumped into the the Connecticut River on a moonless night, and went under. Nobody saw the fellow swim onto shore and disappear into the night.

It was years later, he had been travelled south. There he got into some gambling stuff. And eventually opened a bank, out of his hotel room, which was not a real bank. Then, when he or his mules would hit the tables, the money changers would call the bank to confirm the players has enough money to cover. Of course they did!

They were stealing casino's money, all over El Carib, the West Indies, and Central America, and then gambling with it. Needless to say the games are easier when the player uses the banks own money to cover losses.

Dude loved a posh life. Mixed with celebs, political circles. Then he got caught for real and did hard time. Used the time in prison as if it were a school. Came out with a degree. Then he got extradited back to New England to face charges on the light credit card fraud enterprise he had left behind.

Smart criminal for sure, maybe a genius?

A cop told me about a scam someone ran by taking cars for test drives and then he’d write down the VIN. Later he’d take out an insurance policy using that VIN and claim the car was stolen to collect insurance. I don’t know for sure how it worked but my bet is the cars were still unsold for months so no one knew about it until months after he received the claim money.