Not-So-Smooth Criminals

First, there’s this guy.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The counterfeit money looked good, but there was one flaw. There’s no such thing as a one billion dollar bill.

U.S. Customs agents in California said on Tuesday they had found 250 bogus billion dollar bills while investigating a man charged with currency smuggling.

Tekle Zigetta, 45, pleaded guilty to three federal counts of trying to bring cash, phony bills and a fake $100,000 gold certificate into the United States in January.

For all those of you who are thinking, “Who’s stupid enough to try to pass $1 billion bills?”, it gets better.

Apparently, there are people stupid enough to accept them (though who’s got the money to make change, I don’t know):

“You would think the $1 billion denomination would be a giveaway that these notes are fake, but some people are still taken in,” said James Todak, a secret services agent involved in the probe.

Tens and twenties, kids. Tens and twenties.

But here’s my favorite story. It’s got it all. Shoplifting at Target! By a former top White House political advisor! Who recently resigned to “spend more time with his family”!

Police said they have been able to document 25 instances in which [Claude] Allen tried to obtain refunds for items he was seen picking up from shelves at Target and Hecht’s stores in Montgomery by using receipts for identical items he had bought earlier.

The Jan. 2 citation was issued after Pete Schomburg, a Target loss prevention manager, observed Allen strolling through the store pushing a shopping cart with a Target bag. He was observed placing items inside the bag and elsewhere in the cart, according to the police document.

Allen obtained a refund by presenting receipts for items he purchased previously and then walked out of the store with additional merchandise he hadn’t paid for, according to police.

Schomburg stopped him, noticed that he had receipts for previous purchases at Target stores and called police to the store, according to the document.

Detective David Hill, with the county’s retail crime unit, was assigned to the case after that incident. Using credit card statements and store surveillance video, Hill says in the charging document, he was able to tally $5,000 in potentially fraudulent refunds involving purchases with Allen’s American Express card, the charging document says.

Hill wrote that he was able to recover surveillance videos that document six instances in which Allen obtained fraudulent returns. The six incidents occurred from Oct 29 to Jan. 2 and cost Target more than $1,000, according to Hill.

The costliest item listed in the police document was a $525 Bose theater system purchased Oct. 29 at the store where he received the citation Jan 2. Allen’s actions Oct. 29 “are captured on video,” according to Hill.

Also according to police:

· On the morning of Dec. 24, Allen was filmed selecting a $237 Kodak printer that he paid for with his Visa card. Hours later he obtained a refund at a Target store in Germantown for an identical printer.

· On Dec. 30, Allen bought a $60 jacket, a $25 pair of pants, two shades worth $15 each and two unspecified items worth $2.50 each. Hours later, he received a $125.94 refund for identical items.

· On Jan. 1, he purchased an $88 RCA stereo at a Target store in Gaithersburg. About an hour later, he was videotaped selecting an identical stereo at a Rockville Target store, and he obtained a refund using a receipt that corresponded to the one from Gaithersburg.

But it doesn’t stop there! In what can only be described as life imitating soap operas, Allen is using an “evil twin” defense.

Now, here late this evening I got an email from TPM Reader WH who directed my attention to today’s All Things Considered on NPR in which Michele Norris interviews Michael Fletcher, a reporter with the Post who’s been covering the story.

Now, right at about 1:40 into the interview comes this exchange …

Norris: We should note something, Michael. Apparently Claude Allen has a twin brother?

Fletcher: Yes, he does. He has an identical twin brother who even close friends can’t tell them apart when they see them. And people have seen him and close friends say that Mr. Allen has indicated to them that maybe his brother holds the key to this entire puzzling affair.

Now, I take it I’m not reading too much into this to think that the idea here is that this is a case of mistaken identity in which the virtuous Claude Allen has been nailed for the crimes of his evil twin Floyd.

Man, this is just like that episode of WKRP where Venus got arrested for breaking into a jeweler’s in the Flim Building, and even though the audience knew he was really on a date at the station, his alibi didn’t wash because he couldn’t find the woman, and he had used a taped show, and so he couldn’t account for his whereabouts at the time of the crime…

And then at the end of the episode, we see the date getting on the elevator at the courthouse, in handcuffs, with a guy who looks just like Venus!

Or maybe it’s just like when Crazy Jean Schmidt said that Liddy Dole’s GOP operatives “looked like little Hitlers” to her… and then blamed it on her twin sister, Jennifer.