Earlier this week you’ve read a guest post about three dumb criminals. Did you think that was it for dumb crimes?

Guess again!

Today Stephanie will introduce us to some entertaining robbery fails. Enter Stephanie:

4. Hassocks, Sussex August 2012

Attempting to steal a cashpoint machine is not wildly unusual. However, one such attempted robbery in Hassocks in Sussex took the biscuit, if not the actual machine.

Residents of the centre of the town were drawn to the sound of a massive digger pummelling into the wall of the town’s Barclays bank. In its brutish attack, the bank was almost completely destroyed in the attempt. The stolen digger held the cashpoint machine in its bucket, which it then deposited in the back of a pick up truck acting as a getaway vehicle. The getaway didn’t happen, as the getaway vehicle stalled, leaving the robbers to turn tail on foot leaving the cash machine, a digger, the pick up and a demolished bank.

3. Wichita, Kansas July 2012.

It’s bad enough to attempt to burgle someone’s home, but it’s plain embarrassing to leave with less than you broke in with.

That’s what happened when the residents of South Mead, Wichita returned home to find three men robbing the home’s contents and loading the goods in their car. The residents took on the burglars, and in the scuffle the burglar’s car keys were snatched. Panicked, they ran off, leaving not only their haul, but their getaway car too. It’s not often the swag-count of a robbery actually reaches minus numbers.

2. Atlanta, Georgia January 2008

Using a note with the message ‘this is a stick up’, or something equally as corny, Chanel Monae Gaskin appropriated a bag of cash from a bank in the city. As she left the building, she experienced something of a rude awakening as a dye bomb exploded within the bag. With the money, and herself, festooned in orange paint, she quickly changed her clothes and dumped the cash. Choosing an unusual getaway method, she then waited for the bus, and was soon arrested by police.

Perhaps the weirdest part of the story is that this was the first time Chanel had been unsuccessful using Atlanta’s public transport to make a getaway after a robbery.

1. Abingdon, Oxfordshire August 2012

It was a series of comedy errors for 29 year old James Allen when attempting to rob a newsagent. A shop he’d already attempted to rob just 10 days before.

He held up the shop with a toy gun, then while making his escape, took off his balaclava, unwittingly for the benefit of the CCTV cameras. As if that wasn’t quite stupid enough, he tried to escape by pulling on the door marked ‘Exit’. Frustrated, he kicked at the door, which sent him falling backwards over a bin of drinks. To help him out, the shop assistant that he’d threatened opened the door for him. His freedom was short-lived, and Allan is serving concurrent sentences.

The Alternative Store is a retailer of alternative clothes including the range of crooks and castles clothing.