Christian Scientists, that name is a great theft.

( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Tue 12 Nov 2013, 9:27, 1 reply)

Theft magnet
Someone I know rented a ground floor flat. We told him not to. The flat was also across the road from the local hive of scum and villainy. The flat also had a set of glass sliding doors that opened out onto the road, in perfect line of sight to the road and said hive of scum and villainy on the other side.

The puking and fighting drunks were bad enough. But then he was surprised when he went out one night and left the lights on, the curtains open and a brand new laptop in the middle of the coffee table. Got home to find someone had swapped the laptop for a Besser block (casually lobbed through the window).
(xixax, Tue 12 Nov 2013, 9:13, 2 replies)

I once ordered a lemonade at a cafe in an Ikea
They gave me the cup at the check-out, and I had to fill it up myself from the dispenser. I put some ice from the ice machine in the bottom, then filled my plastic 500ml cup with soft drink mix. Unfortunately, I had filled it too close to the brim for easy transportation. I took a couple of refreshing sips to lower the level in the cup. At this point I could have just walked away. Some nights when I am laying in my bed, racked with remorse, I ask myself again and again: "Why? Why didn't I just walk away?".
But I didn't walk away. A horrible plan formed in my mind, driven by an all-consuming greed. I didn't care whose life I destroyed, how many laws I broke. I didn't even think about the consequences.
I checked the ladies at the register. They were dealing with customers. They had completely forgotten about me and the fulfillment of my purchase. I looked up, trying not to be too obvious. No cctv. There was a mother near me, but she was putting sauce on her children's hotdogs, she wouldn't suspect a thing.
Trying to look casual while my heart was pounding, I returned to the drinks dispenser. As nonchalantly as I could, like I was just any normal customer, I TOPPED UP MY DRINK AGAIN WITH MORE LEMONADE THAN I HAD PAID FOR.
Suddenly fearing the hand of a store detective on my shoulder, I walked a little too quickly to the exit, and my drink spilled a little. I probably lost more than I had gained by illegal means. Even when I got to my car I knew I wouldn't be in the clear until I was at least a few miles away. The drinks holder in my car was too small for the cup, so I drank the whole thing quickly and so didn't really enjoy it. It is a crime I've had to live with for the rest of my days. I never went back to that Ikea again. I can't, the risk is too great. I gambled and won, but if I returned and they recognised me, I could lose everything.
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 12 Nov 2013, 1:17, 1 reply)

Sign o' the times.
About 2 years ago after a busy and noisy Sat. night I found a street sign similar to this -

had been bent over repeatedly back and forth, broken off and left in the middle of the road. As it was clearly a traffic hazard I took it off the road and placed it on the side of the road on my property's side of the footpath (so it wouldn't then become a pedestrian hazard).
I rang the local council and got pretty much what I had expected from the mob that happily takes thousands of dollars in rates from me every year and on a Sun. morning - fuck all. The on duty ranger informed me that "those" signs weren't the providence of the council and I should contact the Main Roads Dept. Which I did. Unsurprisingly the Main Roads boffin informed me that the council fellow was effectively talking out of his bottom and the responsibility for the sign lay completely with the council. I eventually rang the council on Mon. spoke to someone who knew what they were doing and wasn't a supercilious cunt who arranged for someone to come and fix the sign that week. I told them that the sign was in my carport (garage), as again on the Sun. night someone had thrown the large metal sign and post onto the road again making a traffic hazard - no problems at their end.
Sho 'nuff some bloke turned up a couple of days later with a new sign (good to see my rates in action) and post, pulled up some bricks near the footpath, chucked in a bag of quickset and bunged in the new sign. He took the old one away with him after giving me a quizzical look when I got it from the carport.

About a year later.....
Rinse and repeat.
Only this time no-one turned up to replace the sign. So I rang the council again. & again. & again. To absolutely fuck all avail. Then a few months later I got a rude letter from the council stating that a passing council security patrol had spotted the sign in my carport and if I didn't return the sign to it's correct position criminal charges could follow. Uhh?
So I rang 'em. Again. I gave them the name of the civil engineer I'd spoken to previously. To my complete lack of shock I was told he no longer worked there - I had a hard time not querying as to whether it was because he was inept and hadn't done his job.

Anyhoo.... I told them it had been broken off. Again. Months ago, and despite my attempts to get them to fix it nothing had been done. I also pointed out that I'd placed it in my carport out of the way because otherwise the local yoofs found throwing a roughly 2m, 30 odd kg. lump of metal around in the early morning hours great fun but that sometimes those actions could be hazardous. Mostly to traffic. And sometimes my ability to sleep.
2 days later the cops turned up on my doorstep. EDIT: Because there will be shitflingers - I explained the situation to them, they both agreed with my actions in removing the sign from the road and footpath and suggested that once I squared things up with the council & seeing as I clearly wasn't a criminal mastermind road sign thief, I could go to court and chase them for costs. By this time I'd looked up the useless boffin - he was at a much better job in the private sector where it seems you get paid a lot more to fuck up civil engineering. He must have got in touch with the council because the last time I checked with the police there was NO summons for me for "Theft and vandalism of Govt. Property."

TL;DR?
No bee venom DNA was used in the apprehension of the persons unknown who knocked over the sign (either time) & I've got a nice yellow "SLOW DOWN" sign on a big yellow metal pole leaning against the wall in my carport if anyone wants it.
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 23:18, 13 replies)

Tamiya theft
There used to be a toy shop in Chelmsford that sold model kits from tamiya, airfix, hasegawa, fujimi etc. The staff were all well past retirement age, so never noticed a group of 12 year old nerds changing the price labels on everything. I managed to get a tamiya uss enterprise aircraft carrier for £15.99 when it should have been £99.00, and a hasegawa sopwith pup for £9.99 when it should have been £149.99.

Not really theft but I feel some guilt as the shop closed and was absorbed by a bigger store that also went bankrupt.
( The Beast can't help looking at womens breasts on the tube, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 22:17, 4 replies)

In the interest of fair advertising, there are other supermarkets and grocers that you
can steal from. Asda, Morrison's, Waitrose, Sainsbury to name but a few. If you are Northern then best value is Booths supermarkets, although they do not do brown and white goods.
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 17:52, 3 replies)

Use self service checkouts in Tesco's on the moon.
The weaker gravity will allow you to buy a full weeks shopping and all of the electrical items in store for the price of a cucumber.
( Muns, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 16:57, 5 replies)

If you turn the weighing machine at a Tesco self service register upside down then Tesco have to pay you the cost of the weight of the shop.
Don't put it through as carrots or you'll get fuck all.
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 16:03, 2 replies)

Storage Company goes bust!
And keeps all my old Star Wars toys.

My mum died in 2000, I was living in a small flat in Newcastle and had to empty the family home in a short period of time. So, I picked a local storage company and put everything I couldn't fit into my flat into a 8'x 8' crate. There was everything a family of 4 had accumulated over the years but mainly toys - my Action Man collection, Hot Wheels Garages, Matchbox car collection, my mums' 60's record collection, my boxed Star Wars collection, 6 Million Dollar man rocket and loads more.

Fast Forward 5 years, I'm in a position now to sort it and shift into my own loft to hoard for more years.

Their phone number doesn't work. Weird. Their website has closed. Odd. I'll drive up there. Oh, the old factory they were using to store everyone's crates is abandoned. Next door is a small cash and carry so I ask the owner whats going on. "I've had people coming in here for weeks mate" he says. "They packed up and left 2 months ago taking loads of crates with them. I have keys, you want to see inside? There's loads of open crates strewn all over". My heart sinks.

Inside the old factory it was heart breaking, about 20 or so 8' x 8' crates ripped open the contents scattered around the place, ransacked for anything of value. Peoples stuff they'd trusted to a company thrown around and in heaps.

I went to Trading Standards "Oh yes, we know all about him. He's done it before. Starts a storage company, it goes bust, peoples stuff disappears. There's nothing we can do, it's with the liquidators". So I contact the liquidators, there's no record of me or my crate (even though I have documents) so they can't help me. Back to Trading Standards who suggests getting together with other people and take him to the Small Claims courts. So, I go to the Police "well, it's not theft as you gave them to him to look after, have you tried Trading Standards or a solicitor?". Fucking great.

What for? So we'd win, he'd have to pay us back a quid a week or something. Whats the point. It's not the value of the items (maybe £2000), it's the items themselves. Items my Mum and Dad bought like the talking Action Man I got for my 7th Birthday or the Ewok Village me and my bro played with for ages one Christmas Day. My parents are both no longer with me (hence the emptying of the family home) and my brother is now in long-term care due to mental illness so it was always reassuring knowing I had those 'things', a link to my past when I was innocent and happy.

If only I'd gone a few months earlier.... Still makes my stomach hurt now that I was such a fool.

I hope he enjoyed the few quid he made at a carboot sale selling my family items. Cunt.
(TheManofScience, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 10:41, 40 replies)

Co-axed
The stolen modem below reminded me of a similar, though less understandable theft.

At uni we had a film club - this was in 1981, when VCRs were still really new, so students didn't have them (or laptops of course!). So we'd get together in a room and watch a tape that we'd clubbed together to rent. The actual VCR was in a media suite a couple of floors above, since it was too expensive to let grubby first-years get near; only the third-years who ran the AV suite were allowed to touch it.

One night, in the middle of the show, the TV trolley suddenly jerked, and the picture disappeared. As the lights came on it became apparent that someone had yanked the co-ax cable out from outside, where it entered the room through a hole in the windowsill, and cut off a few metres.

I've never quite been able to imagine why someone would have a sudden, pressing, late-night need for three metres of coax, with no connectors on it.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 10:23, Reply)

They took everything
Fortunately this enabled them to shoot heroin for months. They're not dead yet, but I have the pleasure of watching them living in fields and shambling around without even one of the teeth God gave them.
(betsy Eat the rich., Mon 11 Nov 2013, 3:48, 4 replies)

I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids
Many moons ago when I old enough for a bit of freedom, but too young for responsibility my group of misfits found ourselves wondering home from a house party at 2am. It was voting season so there were lots of signs to vote for party X or party Y. We decided it would be hilarious to steal some of these signs and post them around our 6th form common room, especially the signs for the conservatives. So we stole a couple of them, and paraded our trophies throughout the village. One of our party did not partake in the festivities as he was on the phone to his girlfriend.

Then an idea hit me, why not put one of the signs in a random persons garden, especially one with an opposing political party sign in their garden. So I spied my target, a house just off our path. So I set off running towards the house and planted the sign with expert precision, and returned to my group before anyone even noticed I had gone. Then my friend on the phone said "Sarah wants to know why you just put a sign in her garden". Yep, not only had I picked a garden of someone I knew, but my friend had told his girlfriend to look out the window as we were passing the top of her street.

I don't even think we posted them in the 6th form common room.
( bobzarkoff, Mon 11 Nov 2013, 0:25, 1 reply)

free snake
I went and looked at a snake in the local snake shop and went back on the wednesday to collect it, they said I remember you have already paid! Then they gave me the snake and the receipt!! I took it back as it was mental and obviously badly handled and they refunded me £130! Profit and no guilt at all the shit snake handling bastards.
(goonbreath, Sun 10 Nov 2013, 23:35, Reply)

I just stole
a moment of your life as you read this, and you can never get it back.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sun 10 Nov 2013, 21:56, 4 replies)

Back when
I was in the UK, I had a ground floor flat in the ever wonderful area of Rock Ferry, and my modem dongle got shite reception inside, so I used to leave it sat out the window ledge, where it got a mighty 4 bars instead of 1.

One hot summers night, whilst I was playing an online game, I'm suddenly stuck in a huuuuuge lag. I quit and try and restart the game, nothing. Won't log in. How rare.

I then note I have no active internet connection. I restart the computer a few times. Still nothing. This is odd ... hang on ... Yeah left the window open and some scrote stole the modem and it took me quite some time to work out what happened.
(yeswehavenopasties, Sun 10 Nov 2013, 21:22, 3 replies)

I stole the stars from the night sky just to put them in her eyes.
Not much of her left after the 6,000 degrees Centigrade chromosphere incinerated her head, body, house, country and planet.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sun 10 Nov 2013, 21:13, Reply)

Newsletter stolen
Own up, who stole this weeks newsletter?
(h3dg3h0g, Sun 10 Nov 2013, 11:17, 4 replies)

Not really theft,
but I did acquire something that I didn't fully pay for.
About 2000, I got a quote for some double glazing work, new door and porch, a couple of windows, and some bargeboards and fascias.
I paid the deposit of about £250, and the work was carried out a week later. The guys doing the work asked for the rest of the money, but I wanted a receipt and full bill which they didn't have the appropriate paperwork to do at the time.
I said send me a bill, and I'll pay.
Never got the bill, so I ended up with about £2500 worth of stuff for a tenth of the price.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 22:04, Reply)

Orange grove
We were driving through an area of orange groves in Southern California, and decided to sample the local produce. Our presence was soon detected, and we were quickly dodging very bright headlights between the rows of trees. An English-language version of a WWII prison camp breakout movie. We escaped, but only by keeping calm and desperately hugging Mother Earth under the brilliant beams.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 18:46, Reply)

Internet Banking
"Get online banking, everything is so much easier" they all told me. My parents have been using internet banking for years and swear by it. So after many years of resisting it (I haven't even had a good reason for it other than horrendous amounts of internet trolling making me paranoid) I signed up a few months ago.

Yep, it's good, and it's convenient, and it's paved the way for some Singaporean cunt to steal over £1550 from my account in the last couple of days. Yep, thanks for that.
(PNurse, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 16:32, 5 replies)

You know those self-service things in Tesco?
Apparently if you get a 42-inch television you can weigh it on the scales and pay for it as though it's bananas. Suppose it weighs 30kg, then you can go back to the fruit section and weigh out 30kg of bananas (or slightly less, to be safe), put them in your bag in a really obvious way, then walk out the shop.

That way you have 30kg of bananas and a clear conscience.
( Ghoti Fingers, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 15:34, 2 replies)

I was in the bath
and I stole a look at my tumescent penis and realised I needed the toilet

Long story short I ended up pissing in my own mouth
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 14:40, 2 replies)

grass stolen by baggage handlers
my best mate had 3 bags of amsterdam green stolen out of his luggage by Belfast International Airport baggage handlers,. the swines.
(terryhoosh remembers when this was all fields, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 13:16, 3 replies)

Bee & E.
A few years ago we were living in a 'rougher' part of town. It's a beaut house on the corner of a not-so-busy road that is situated across the road from a large expanse of gazetted bush-land. Which was wonderful to walk thru most mornings with bub in her pram. This was our entree into the property market so as you could imagine we were limited with our budget and hence were we could live. No "Marshmallows" in our family unfortunately.
We were quite lucky as the previous owner had been a prolific fruit tree grower and also an apiarist. A tradition we attempted to continue.

The 'rough' element came from the large amount of government supplied housing and the fact that the said government dept. had placed two warring aboriginal families with a long-standing feud in said houses within walking distance of each other. The incidents stemming from this family feud included a drive-by shooting and someone being run over, repeatedly, until they were dead.
Good times. :/

So.. One arvo I've picked the sprog up from Grand Ma's Babysitting service after work whilst the missus was busy studying and what-not.
We've rumbled home - godbless Landcruiser FJ-45 engines. Guaranteed to lull your bub to sleep each & every single time.
Upon arriving home I unlocked our driveway gates and then noticed that the side gate was open. Bub was asleep so I locked the car and ventured towards the backyard.
I found the sliding security door ripped out of it's rails and a brick thrown thru the glass sliding door.
Right next to a full pane window next to the glass sliding door.
With no security screen on it. At all.

So. After I ensured that the car containing bub was locked I ventured into the house. Touching nothing of course & with my tyre iron safely hefted in my hands.
The thieving cunts had nicked anything electronic and worth money including our digital camera and the missus laptop. Once I'd found the house was empty I checked with the neighbours after ringing the cops. Not surprisingly no one heard anything. Including an aluminium sliding door being wrenched out of it's rails and a plate glass door being smashed.

I rang the insurance mob and we had the glass and sliding doors fixed, quick snap. Then came the claim after the forensic cops eventually attended a couple of days later. The forensics lady asked me about where they might have touched the doors.
Then she asked me a question I'd have never expected. She asked me about our bees, in our hive. That we barely kept going other than we had a local bee-keeper come round every now and then to check our hive. Apparently bees have DNA. And it would seem that the person who had broken into our home had been stung by one of our bees.

And was intensely allergic to the sting. And the police could trace the DNA. Eventually. After his mate was caught on CCTV turning him up to Emergency.
Seems he'd already sold his stash to the local Hock shop. & it was long gone. So we got some new stuff thanks the insurance company.
At least he discovered that he was allergic to bee stings. Heaven knows what might have happened otherwise.
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 10:35, 34 replies)

As an illegal immigrant, I get huge amounts of free money, a million pound house, free healthcare and dentistry
Right, kids?
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 10:26, 10 replies)

( Zuowan, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 9:01, Reply)

Free fridge and money!
New house, space for beer fridge! Trotted off to fridge emporium and chose a great big one. Delivery day arrived...and it didn't fit through the pantry door. Bollocks. Back it went, as did I, this time with all necessary measurements. Chose another (smaller, unfortunately) fridge and sorted out payment. Brilliantly cocked up, with value difference credited separately, and original payment backed out. I didn't point out this mistake as i had a hangover and actually hadn't noticed myself. Result: 250 quid of free fridge plus 30 quid. I don't feel guilty. Still have the fridge, it is ace.
(Piffleworthy, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 7:22, Reply)

... So.... How does a real estate agent do it?
Which is the very question that occurred to me after flinging the daily fishwrap up onto the porch of a customer who happened to be a real estate agent who's face and signs were well known locally. I mean... if he wants to move, he has to sell the house. Does he do it through his own agency, or get a professional courtesy through a competitor? And wouldn't it look rather strange to have Mr. ABC with an XYZ sign in his yard.

Oh yaaash.....!

So I co-opted my friends, explained the idea, and every Saturday or so at the end of the evening, we'd prowl the neighborhoods looking for yard signs. I made sure to find no repeats. A pass, a slow return pass, a quick dash, grab, and toss into the back of my mate's pickup and the evening was wrapped up.

By the end of Senior Year, I had 40 of them. A day or so after graduation about 2 AM, I choggied up and down the street with 2 under each arm. I tiled his yard with signs so's that you couldn't walk a straight line from one end to the other without hitting several.

Epic. To the point that it made the local section of the very paper that I had delivered for so many years. I chatted him up a few years later. He loved the prank.... but said it was hell returning them.
(shamblinthru Grasshopper! Next time use the potholders!, Sat 9 Nov 2013, 3:39, 5 replies)