Sunday, December 5, 2010

Finally! A Genius!!!

I have met so many stupid sta-hoo-pid criminals in my line of work that I was beginning to despair of the lot of them.

I was beginning to lose some of my sense of magic about the whole evil genius mastermind thing.

Then I ran across this story completely by accident today and I just had to post about it. It restored some of my faith in criminals.

Outside the zoo in Bristol, England is a parking lot that will hold about 150 cars and 8 buses.

For the last 25 years the parking lot fees have been taken and managed by a rather nondescript man who everyone recalls as being "very pleasant."

He was charging 1.40 pounds for each car and 7.00 pounds per bus for parking.

Then one day after 25 years of coming to work and never missing a day, the little man doesn't show up for work.

Nobody has a name or a phone number to call to ask about him so the zoo administration calls the city council and asks for another parking attendant.

The city council says the zoo parking lot is the zoos problem and they should provide their own attendant.

The zoo claims the parking lot attendant was a city employee.

The city does some research and claims that the attendant has never been on their payroll.

It turns out that this guy just showed up with a ticket machine one day about 25 years ago and started charging parking fees, raking in about 560 pounds a day for the last 25 years. The equivalent of about 7 million pounds over the span of time.

And apparently when he either decided he had enough money or that he'd been doing it long enough, he decided to retire.

And nobody even has a clue what his name is.

Freaking brilliant!

So granted, he's no Dr. Moriarty, but he devised and executed a plan which allowed him to live in comfort and rake in extra dough for very little work and got away with it clean.

And did anybody get hurt? No.

And did he really steal anything from anybody? Not really.

Of course, they would call that "theft by deception" and make it a felony here.

But in my books, I'll have to tip my hat to him, wherever he may be.

Today was National Sacher Torte Day. I had to look that one up. It's apparently some sort of chocolate pie/cheesecake thing from Vienna invented back in 1832.

Tomorrow is National Gazpacho Day and Mitten Tree Day. I'll let you look those up for yourselves.

9 comments:

  1. How much is 7 million pounds in American dollars?

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  2. That is a great story! Here in Detroit you have to be careful parking down town because of just that, you get unsavory types that break into the gates of parking lots near events and “charge” for parking.

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  3. What a freakin' genius! People like that crack me up. There is a guy here locally they call the geezer bandit who has robbed liked 17 banks or something and still hasn't been caught. The guy is like as old as Moses. He was even seen with an oxygen tank. Now I know robbing banks is wrong but it's kinda funny that this ancient guy still has not been caught.

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  4. Nuclearheadache- 7 million pounds is equivalent to $11,021,810.36. Or so.

    Sunday- I wonder if I set up a ticket booth at the prison..... (grin)

    Misty- Gotta watch out for bank robbers. They almost always have a gun and not a whole lot to lose, if you know what I mean...

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  5. I agree, the guy is brilliant!! It was so subtle, that no one thought anything about it. Wow! Thanks for sharing the story.

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  6. There was a story a couple years ago about a guy who worked for a major manufacturing facility here in the PNW for 17yrs after his position had been made obsolete when the system he specialized in was scrapped. Apparently HR fired his managers before the managers fired the guy so he disappeared into paperwork limbo. He was a loyal employee, never sick, came and went quietly with nothing to do for 17yrs. They figured it out when he retired, but he hadn't broken any laws so there was nothing they could do about it.

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  7. tahtimbo- When i saw the story i had to spread it around. It was too good to pass up.

    Critter- I wish i could get into a spot like that.

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  8. M16 Murphy- Oh no! That really sucks. Thanks for telling me, but.... rats.

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