Splicetoday

Digital
Nov 10, 2008, 11:29AM

Craigslist: good for bikes, sex and bank robberies

Crowdsourcing a bank robbery. Seriously.

Ingenious:

Craigslist is a great place to sell that beat-up sofa or (for the supervillains among us) recruit your next batch of henchmen. Now, thanks to a Monroe, WA man, "bank robbery decoys" has joined the list of creative uses of the grassroots classifieds service.

According to The Seattle Times, a Craigslist ad was placed last week, offering road construction work at $28.50 per hour in Monroe, WA, a city northeast of Seattle. About a dozen men replied to the ad, and all received instructions to show up outside a Bank of America wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and a blue shirt.

As the men gathered outside the bank within the proper attire, however, another man wearing the same getup used pepper spray on a guard transporting cash from an armored truck into the bank. The suspect grabbed the duffel bag, ran 100 yards to Wood Creek, and made his getaway (floataway?) on what police believe to be an inner tube. Seattle FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs told the Times that armored car robberies are "quite uncommon," and that she's never heard of an inner tube serving as a getaway vehicle.

The guy has been caught:

Law enforcement had collected DNA and other evidence after the robbery went down last month, and this week, they were able to catch 28-year-old Anthony Curcio while he was trying to pick up his car, which he had left in a Target parking lot.

Epic.

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