Quite excellent robbery.

[Pulp Hero]

Note, that I do not condone robbery- but damn, this guy is my hero for the week.

In an elaborate robbery scheme that's one part The Thomas Crowne Affair and one part Pineapple Express, a crook robbed an armored truck outside a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Wash., by hiring decoys through Craigslist to deter authorities.

It gets better: He then escaped in a creek headed for the Skykomish River in an inner tube, and the cops are still looking for him. "A great amount of money" was taken, Monroe police said, but did not provide a dollar value.

It appears to have unfolded this way, according to a Seattle-based NBC affiliate: around 11:00 a.m. PDT on Tuesday, the robber, wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a blue shirt, and a respirator mask went over to a guard who was overseeing the unloading of cash to the bank from the truck. He sprayed the guard with pepper spray, grabbed his bag of money, and fled the scene.

But here's the hilarious twist. The robber had previously put out a Craigslist ad for road maintenance workers, promising wages of $28.50 per hour. Recruits were asked to wait near the Bank of America right around the time of the robbery--wearing yellow vests, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and preferably a blue shirt. At least a dozen of them showed up after responding to the Craigslist ad.

"I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour," one of the unwitting decoys, named Mike, said to the NBC station. As it turns out, they were simply placed there to confuse cops who were looking for a guy wearing a virtually identical outfit.

Authorities eventually found the getaway inner tube (a getaway inner tube!) and suspect that accomplices may have picked up the robber in a boat. According to the NBC affiliate, police hope to track him down by figuring out who posted the Craigslist ad in the first place.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was not immediately available for comment.

LINKY

[Singular Intellect]

It's scary just how a little forethought and planning can make something like this fly. As least in the short term.

[JME2]

Clever. Devilishly clever.

[Tanasinn]

Better this guy than bank big wigs. It's obvious who's more clever.
(sarcasm)

[Xenophobe3691]

A similar scheme was posted in Stross' "Halting State." Maybe this guy got some ideas from that?...

[Strider]

A similar scheme was posted in Stross' "Halting State." Maybe this guy got some ideas from that?...

I didn't remember the exact details, but just reading the article put the familiar smell of Stross' info-trickery in my nose. Maybe he was the culprit?

[Ekiqa]

I love the inner tube getaway.

If he was smart, and I don't doubt it, he probably posted the Craigslist add from a library, or some such place.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Great. I just responded to a friend's suggestion that Obama will be assassinated by pointing out that he ought to be safe if he makes a swift getaway on an inner tube, and now I have a mental image of tall, svelte Obama bouncing along down a big wide sewer drain into TMNT land on an inner tube as the secret service valiantly cover him from the mouth of the drain stuck in my head.

[loomer]

Dear god, tell me he advertised for the theorized boat pickup on craiglist too. It'd be the first purely digitally organized robbery I've heard of.

[Kamakazie Sith]

That must have sucked for the decoys who were most likely taken into custody at gun point.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, and they wouldn't even know why men with guns are shoving them to the ground and cuffing them and hauling their sorry asses to jail. Poor blokes. What a dick.


But man, this is better than Heat!

[Solauren]

Why would ANYONE fall for an advertisement on Craiglist offering road work at 28.50 per hour?

Road Work, at least locally, is usually done by unionized labor, and has rather strict safety and gear requirements.

However, brilliant on the part of the robber.

[salm]

And they didn´t even get paid their 28.50$ per hour.

[salm]

Why would ANYONE fall for an advertisement on Craiglist offering road work at 28.50 per hour?

Road Work, at least locally, is usually done by unionized labor, and has rather strict safety and gear requirements.

However, brilliant on the part of the robber.

And this is common knowlege in the US? Personally i have no idea what the requirements are around here for road work.
I´ve taken jobs without knowing exactly what the requirements are trusting the employer to tell me about them. It´s so far allways worked out.

[ArmorPierce]

And they didn´t even get paid their 28.50$ per hour.

not only that but they had to buy the clothes and equipment

[Mayabird]

Yeah, it would've sounded pretty sketchy, but when people get really desperate, they don't ask questions. I've been there, so I know.

But back on the robber's side, the streams and rivers around here are cold. I don't know about that part of the Skykomish, but a lot of the rivers around here start at glaciers. Escaping on an inner tube is even more audacious when the water is near freezing. (But this is also me speaking, someone who grew up where the water is supposed to be warm and soupy except during the winter; I notice the locals don't mind going swimming in Puget Sound, which I consider way too cold to go swimming in.)