EVER GET the feeling you're not quite cut out for your chosen career? I imagine this very thought must be going through the mind of Wojciech Borowski at the moment.
Borowski (25) is currently languishing in a jail cell, beginning a four-year stretch for selling stolen cars. This genius was - Dublin Circuit Criminal Court records show - involved in a crime ring that nicked cars from outside people's houses in Ireland, fitted them with false Irish plates and then sold them on Irish websites and in Irish car magazines.
Our crafty chum would meet prospective buyers who responded to the ads, divest them of their cash and give them fake documents along with the stolen cars.
The scam sounds completely foolproof, doesn't it? So Bumbling Borowski must have thought, as he chuckled all the way to the bank. In total, he took four different "customers" for a total of €56,500.
The court report shows Borowski even tried to sell the same car twice, taking a €1,000 deposit from one punter who never heard from him again and then getting €30,000 from another for the same vehicle a fortnight later.
Bumbling Borowski finally got busted when a woman spotted her recently-stolen car advertised for sale on the internet. (Quelle surprise. Selling a car stolen in tiny little Ireland on a tiny little Irish website? And getting caught doing it? Who, other than someone with a tiny little brain, could have foreseen that happening?)
Once she got over her fit of giggles at the brazen stupidity of this crime, the woman contacted gardaí, who set up a sting. Borowski was arrested while trying to sell the woman her own car and subsequently fingered in an identity parade by all four of his victims.
I'd love to have been jury chairman at his trial. "He did what? Give him 20 years. Four for the crime and 16 for being a muppet."
(If you'll allow me to digress somewhat, the notion of having a jury made up of your peers has always puzzled me. Surely, if the jury members are supposed to be your equals, they should all be criminals too?)
Another criminal mastermind, who may well be reconsidering his career path, is the Cleveland carjacker who got lost on his way to the bank he planned to rob.
This mental midget forced his captive to pull over the SUV they were in, leaned out the passenger window and politely asked a local television news crew for directions.
Unbeknownst to the carjacker, the driver was mouthing the word "Help!" to the journalist and using hand signals to reveal he was being held at gunpoint.
Cue a call to the cops and the arrest of the 19-year-old crook, who has been charged with robbery.
I don't know if idiocy is a crime in Ohio. If it is, he's guilty as sin. I'm guessing he'll have plenty of time in the slammer to sit in the corner and think about what he's done. And perhaps learn how to use a GPS. (That's Gangster Protection System, for your information.)
While on the subject of car theft, I got a chuckle reading about the Chinese motorist who was arrested recently for hanging up a fake police uniform in the rear window of his car.
The wily motorist, who pleaded for lenience as his car had been broken into several times previously, was using the decoy policeman as a sort of scarecrow to deter thieves.
Who knew there were so many half-blind car thieves in China?
The police - perhaps in a tacit acknowledgement that, while he was a few chopsticks short of a banqueting set, his plan was ingenious - released the driver after confiscating the uniform. Which they promptly hung up in their station window before popping out for a very, very long lunch.
Probably.
