As seen on Brainz.org, 15 of the Biggest and Weirdest Undercover Operations of all time!
Marion Barry
Some undercover operations are twisted and kind of sad, requiring law enforcement to bend the rules of conduct and blur the line between cop and criminal. Some are triumphant, bringing down the big bad crime boss through years of meticulous work and sacrifice. Then there are some like the case of former DC mayor Marion Barry, which border on candid-camera hilarious. Well, you know -- if they didn’t involve an elected official who ran the seat of American power for a couple of decades, that is.
Barry was a prominent politician and civil rights icon for most of his career. But like so many other, once pure and idealistic politicians, he eventually came under investigation from the FBI and DC police in the early 90s. They managed to flip his girlfriend into an informant, and eventually caught him on camera smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room. Afterward Barry was livid, and ended up muttering the immortal quote “Bitch set me up”, which we all can only wish were uttered in an age when the internet existed.
Joran Van Der Sloot
If you buy in to the missing white woman hysteria, you’re most certainly familiar with Joran van der Sloot, the chief suspect in the disappearance of Natalie Holloway. Van der Sloot, aside from having a name that sounds like a euphemism or something out of a German snuff film, was the last person seen with Holloway at an Aruban bar in 2005. He denied any knowledge of her disappearance and was eventually released...only to return after a media storm and several attempts to pin the crime on him.
Van der Slot claimed that for several thousand dollars, he would show the family the location of Natalie’s hidden body and tell them exactly what happened to her. Like any intelligent person in that scenario, the Holloways called the police, who caught van der Sloot on tape essentially committing fraud since, in a somewhat sick twist, the location he showed the Holloways ended up not containing Natalie’s body. Prosecutors let van der Sloot walk and instead trailed him for months, at the conclusion of which he promptly murdered another young woman in almost exactly the same fashion as he was suspected of having killed Natalie Holloway. The undercover operation was deemed “successful” in the sense that van der Sloot was finally put away for life. But that’s like saying it’s “successful” to get back at your ex-girlfriend by killing yourself.
The Wildlife Trafficking Ring
As it turns out, catching random animals and selling them as pets is kind of illegal. And while cops have yet to bust down little Timmy’s door and arrest him for that garter snake he caught in the yard, apparently the illicit animal trade is a large underground business. For whatever baffling reason, some people catch hundreds of deer, alligators, beavers, you-name-it and for an equally baffling reason some people are willing to pay top dollar for these wild animals.
Well not in the state of Mississippi, no sir. The state spent several months and presumably several hundreds of thousands of dollars infiltrating this dangerous underbelly of the criminal world to obtain convictions on 15 of the worst kind of Bambi’s-mom-killing criminals. What heinous acts were these Corleones of Cougars, these Scarfaces of Squirrels, these Tarantinos of Turkeys perpetrating other than torturing puns? Well as Curtis Green, director of law enforcement for the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, put it "They were legally killing beaver here, where tails are worth about $5 but were turning them in in Arkansas, claiming they were killed there, and collecting a $10 bounty." Truly justice was served.
As reported on Raw Justice, many robbers are by no means masters of disguise. In fact, most of the ones seen below are currently doing time.
The original article can be found here.
Matthew Allan McNelly and Joey Lee Miller are two Iowa burglars who couldn’t come up with ski masks, so they improvised with black magic marker. A man called the police after the pair tried to break into his home and when they were caught there was no hiding their guilt. It was written all over their dumb faces. McNelly was charged with drunk driving and both idiots were charged with attempted burglary.
Conrad Zdzierak wore an elaborate disguise when he went on a bank robbing spree in Ohio. Police say the robber at six bank locations was described as a bald black man with acne scarring on his face. Zdzierak had used an expensive Hollywood-style mask as a disguise. Police acted on a tip and got a search warrant and the jig was up.
A man disguised as a tree tried to rob a bank in New Hampshire. Unbe-leaf-ably, duct-taped tree branches to his head and torso, entered the bank and demanded money from a teller. He was identified by the surveillance footage and arrested.
Two Colorado retards wore women’s thong underwear on their heads in an attempt to disguise themselves while they robbed a convenience store. As it turns out, thongs don’t cover all that much, so they were recognized from the surveillance tape, on which they are seen beating the clerk in the face, breaking her jaw and stealing $100 and some cigarettes.
In Estero, Florida, a man surprised the clerk at a gas station by running in, wearing a mop on his head as a disguise, and demanding money. The cashier stalled him and he eventually just ran away empty-handed.