- 2 days ago
When criminal plans go off the rails, the fallout can be even wilder than the original scheme. From a botched bank robbery and a doomed insurance scam to a getaway stopped by an alligator, these true crime disasters spiraled into total mayhem. Sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime.
Transcript
00:00We realized what pizza shop Eddie worked at, and I sent two guys down there to conduct interviews.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo. And today, we're counting down our picks for the illegal acts that went wrong
00:11in ways no one saw coming. And you can see the big mushroom cloud.
00:18Alligator takes down drunk driver In June 2026, Louisiana state
00:24troopers pulled over a man who was driving so recklessly that he had allegedly hit a concrete
00:28barrier, blew out a tire, and kept going. When the cops got him out of the car, the man took
00:33off
00:33running before they could arrest him. He must've thought that since he'd already made two incredibly
00:38dumb decisions that day, he might as well go for a third. So he jumped from a bridge into a
00:43swamp.
00:43A nearby alligator probably wasn't expecting lunch to fall from the sky, but he saw an opportunity
00:48and seized it. The man suffered injuries to both arms, but was able to escape. Escape the alligator,
00:54that is. Not the police. Meanwhile, the sheriff thought it appropriate to honor the alligator
00:59for its role in the arrest by officially deputizing it. It has since returned to the swamp to continue
01:05keeping it safe. Rathkeel Rover's Rhino Robbery. Go ahead, try to say that 10 times fast. This Irish
01:12gang hired thieves to steal artifacts from museums in the UK. And it couldn't have gone worse. Imagine
01:18Ocean's Eleven, but everyone is incompetent. In January 2012, one thief tried to leave a museum
01:30with a Ming Dynasty sculpture in his backpack. Unsurprisingly, he got caught. In February,
01:36four members of the group tried to run off with a stuffed rhinoceros' head, but they dropped it
01:41because it was too heavy. A few weeks later, they smashed a hole in the wall of a museum,
01:46and successfully made off with a jade bowl. But after hiding it in a vacant lot,
01:50they couldn't find it again. You know it's bad when even the court documents describe your crime
01:56as a fiasco. You gotta walk before you can crawl. First then.
02:02Murder for Subcontract
02:04The gig economy has gone too far when even hitmen are hiring out their jobs. In 2013, Chinese businessman
02:11Tan Youhui hired another man to murder a competitor named Wei for 2 million yen, or about 282 thousand
02:18dollars. But the hitman's calendar must have been full because he hired another man to do it for him,
02:24offering him half the money. So he was keeping half the money for himself for Mo Tiang Chang to do
02:29all
02:30the work. The second would-be hitman apparently also had a packed schedule, since he hired a third man
02:35to carry out the hit for 770 thousand yen. That hitman hired a fourth, who hired a fifth,
02:41who contacted Wei and suggested they work together to fake his death. For Wei him out to fake his death,
02:47he'd have to upend his whole life. Wei agreed to this, but called the cops instead. And the five hitmen
02:52and Tan Youhui all went to jail. And that's the story of a man who hired a hitman, who hired
02:58a hitman,
02:58who hired a hitman, who hired a hitman, who hired a hitman. The Rothsey bank robbery. This group belongs
03:05on an episode of World's Dumbest Criminals. Three men tried to rob a royal bank of Scotland in Rothsey
03:11in 1975, only to be laughed out of the building. With over 140 thousand employees in 35 countries,
03:19serving 35 million customers across 40 brands, RBS is diverse in every single thing we do. On their way in,
03:26the trio got stuck in the revolving doors and had to be freed by employees, who didn't realize they
03:31were robbers. Once unstuck, the three men left, then rushed back in, and demanded 5,000 pounds.
03:38The staff were all chuckling over the incident with the doors, and then this only made them laugh
03:43harder. To prove they were serious, one of the thieves jumped over the counter, but injured his
03:48ankle. The others tried to flee, but you guessed it, got stuck in the revolving doors on their way out,
03:54caught in the chimney. The aftermath of this burglary gone wrong wasn't discovered until more
03:59than 15 years later. Construction workers were renovating a gift shop in Notches, Mississippi,
04:05in early 2001, when they stumbled upon the skeleton of a man wedged into the chimney. Luckily, a wallet
04:11was also found with the remains, so police were able to ID the body. It was a 27-year-old
04:16man,
04:16who'd been reported missing in 1985, and happened to have a rap sheet full of burglaries. Investigators
04:22guessed he'd been trying to rob the shop by crawling down the chimney, got stuck, and died. Who knew
04:28the crazy Santa story from Gremlins could happen in real life?
04:32And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.
04:35For more breakdowns of compelling cases and true crime stories, scan the QR code on the screen to
04:40join WatchMojo's 24-7 true crime livestream. Let the punishment fit the crime.
04:46Pants on Fire
04:47You'd think arson would be one of the easier crimes to get right, but that wasn't the case for this
04:53pair.
04:53This really was quite a nasty Christmas present for all involved.
04:58In the early hours of Christmas morning 2024, these two geniuses were attempting to burn down
05:03a fast-food restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. One of them must have spilled the accelerant on
05:08their clothing, because as soon as the storefront goes up in flames, so do their pants.
05:13Victims are at a loss for words as to why their business has been targeted.
05:17Props to the news anchors who had to narrate this footage with a straight face. But these
05:22attempted arsonists have competition for the title of the most inept criminal duo.
05:27In November 2025, two would-be shooters in England were arrested after one accidentally
05:32shot the other in the leg before they even got out of the car. Richmond Hill Explosion
05:39In Indiana, couples' plan to blow up their own house and collect the insurance money
05:43ended up leveling half their neighborhood.
05:45Today, the Richmond Hill subdivision looks like a typical South Side neighborhood,
05:50but long-time Hoosiers will never forget what happened here ten years ago.
05:55Monserrati Shirley and her boyfriend, Mark Leonard, tried to stage a natural gas explosion in their quiet
06:00Indianapolis suburb in November 2012. They were successful, but the explosion didn't just destroy
06:06their house. It also killed two of their neighbors and damaged 33 other homes so badly they had to
06:12be demolished. You stand up, go to the front door, and it's blown wide open. Investigators realized this
06:18wasn't an accident pretty much immediately. It didn't help that Leonard had a history of fraud charges,
06:23or that he tried to hire a hitman to murder the lead witness while he was in jail. Leonard was
06:28sentenced to life in prison and surely got 50 years. Dozens of homes have been rebuilt since
06:34that blast in 2012. For those who stayed in the neighborhood, they will never forget what happened
06:40in Richmond Hill ten years ago. Norco Shootout
06:44This started as a bank robbery and ended as a firefight with multiple casualties and an unbelievable
06:49amount of damage done. In 1980, five men armed with handguns, AR-15s, a katana, and homemade
06:56bombs tried to rob a bank in Norco, California. Unfortunately for them, a cop happened to be
07:01parked right across the street. As they tried to flee, the officer managed to shoot the getaway driver,
07:07causing them to crash. The four survivors stole a truck and led the police on a wild pursuit,
07:12shooting and throwing bombs at them along the way. They ultimately damaged 33 cop cars and even
07:18managed to ground a police helicopter. Another robber and a sheriff's deputy were killed before
07:23the other three were finally captured. Dark web drug dealer hires hitman to kill sock puppets.
07:30Strap in, because this one gets complicated. Silk Road was an online black market run by an American
07:37with the username DreadPirateRoberts. The FBI calls it the most sophisticated criminal marketplace on the
07:43internet. In 2013, a dealer who went by Friendly Chemist contacted Roberts, claiming he'd been
07:49scammed out of $700,000 by another user, LucyDrops, and demanding Roberts reimburse him. Instead,
07:57Roberts hired a hitman to kill Friendly Chemist. The hitman claimed to do the deed, then alerted Roberts
08:02that other users were supposedly conspiring against him. Roberts paid the hitman over $700,000 to take out
08:09six people he believed were threatening him. The twist? No one was actually killed. The entire
08:14thing was a con. And Friendly Chemist, LucyDrops, the hitman, and the other victims were probably
08:20all the same person. Want more true crime on WatchMojo? Check out our dedicated 24-hour livestream.
08:29True crime all the time. We're gonna have a great time together, Cheryl.
08:34Pizza bomber. Did we say the last crime was complicated? In 2003, pizza delivery driver
08:40Brian Wells walked into a Pennsylvania bank with a homemade shotgun and a bomb locked to his neck.
08:46The notes were nine pages. They were quite rambling in places. He demanded a quarter
08:52million dollars, but left with less than $9,000. Police arrested him 15 minutes later,
08:57but before they could safely remove the device, the bomb exploded and killed him.
09:02The suspect still had part of the device secured to his neck.
09:07Investigators later concluded that a group of conspirators had seemingly exploited Wells,
09:12coercing him into carrying out the robbery with the bomb strapped to his neck.
09:16Marge wanted me to know that she, of course, had nothing to do with the heist,
09:20and had never been on the FBI's radar. Even stranger, the gangsters had left him an
09:25elaborate scavenger hunt of bizarre instructions and timed tasks to retrieve the key to the device.
09:31The case captured the public imagination for years afterward. Which of these true crime stories
09:37do you think is the wildest? Let us know in the comments!