Dumb Crimes Europe
They planned the perfect crime. They failed spectacularly.
Europe's funniest real crimes. No violence, just spectacular stupidity delivered with the deadpan seriousness it deserves. New episodes every Saturday.
Hosted by Kit Barlow & co-host
All Episodes(19)
The Unlucky Bike Thief
Copenhagen, 2016. In a city with five times more bicycles than people, a man levers open a low-grade wheel lock on a black Christiania cargo bike — a recognisable, expensive three-wheeled bike, the kind a Copenhagen parent uses for a school run — and rides it northbound up a narrow side street.
The Instagram Fugitive
A Dutch fugitive convicted in absentia in 2010 spent nine years on the run — through Spain, Portugal and Greece, on four fake identities, paying in cash, leaving no digital trail. By 2019 he had settled in Mallorca and concluded, after nine quiet years, that the European Arrest Warrant was no longer being actively pursued.
The Drug Delivery Pigeons
Bucharest, 2015. A medium-security Romanian prison runs, as part of a sanctioned rehabilitation programme, a small pigeon-keeping loft in one of its exercise yards. The inmates raise the pigeons from hatching. Some of the inmates are, in their pre-incarceration lives, experienced pigeon racers. Pigeons return to where they were raised. Pigeons can be trained to carry small loads. Pigeons can be carried out of a prison by visiting volunteers, released across Bucharest, and they will fly — by every measure of homing-pigeon biology — back home through the air over a twelve-metre concrete wall.
The Courthouse Robber
Naples, 2016. A man cases a small commercial-looking building across the street from where he is sitting. He sees a counter, clerks behind it, modest cash transactions, people walking in and out with briefcases. He concludes — without entering, without reading the brass plaque on the door — that the building is a small private bank.
The Snoring Burglar
Cologne, 2014. A burglar forces a kitchen window of an empty apartment, takes a laptop, takes some cash, finishes the job in under an hour. Then he sits down on the homeowner's bed for what he tells himself will be sixty seconds of rest.
The Kebab DNA
Leicester, England, 2012. A man burgles a terraced house. Forces a back door. Lifts a laptop, a games console, some cash. He's been inside about twenty minutes. He's hungry. He opens the fridge.
The Cleaning Burglar
North Rhine-Westphalia, 2012. A couple in their fifties leave for a two-week walking holiday in Italy. On day two, a man forces a kitchen window. Climbs in. Has a shower. Changes into the husband's clothes. Makes a sandwich. Watches German game shows. Decides not to leave.
The Undercover Police Bar
Arnhem, Netherlands, 2019. Two drug dealers get a tip from a colleague: there's a new bar in town where the manager is specifically interested in cocaine. Cash buyer, no questions asked. They drive over with nine hundred grams of cocaine in a backpack. They walk in. They order two beers. They sit at the bar discussing prices in front of about fifteen quiet patrons.
The Snitch Parrot
Calabria, 2010. A small house in a small town. A married couple. An African Grey parrot. A regular visitor named Roberto, who comes round to play cards and stay late. Over many months, the parrot — listening to the wife call to her guest — learns the name. Eventually, the parrot says "Roberto" continuously. Apropos of nothing. As background. The household stops noticing.
The Locked-In Gym Robber
Stockholm, 2010. A former gym member identifies the perfect window: Saturday night to Monday morning. Thirty-six hours of free run at the safe in the manager's office. He climbs onto the roof. Removes a ventilation cover. Crawls twelve metres along an industrial duct. Drops into the men's changing room. He has tools, a torch, and — for some reason — a sandwich.
The Spider-Man Burglar
Turin, 2017. A man identifies a third-floor apartment as a burglary target. The owners are away. The doors are locked. So he stands in the street and looks up. He grabs the wrought iron of a first-floor balcony and pulls himself up. Then the second floor. Then he reaches for the third — and his trousers catch on a decorative flourish of the railing.
The Payslip Hold-Up
Berlin, 2009. A man decides to rob a small branch bank in the Tiergarten district. The plan is light. He has not brought a weapon. He has not brought a disguise. He has not brought a getaway driver. What he has brought is a piece of paper. With three sentences on it. Money. Now. Or I shoot.
The eBay Burglar
Vienna, 2008. A burglar enters an empty first-floor apartment. Lifts a laptop, a camera, stereo equipment, watches, and — for reasons the court papers do not fully explain — the bedroom curtains. Walks out. Closes the window behind him. By any conventional measure, a clean job.
The Pocket-Dial Burglar
Surrey, England, 2014. A man broke into a house. He was, by the standards of his profession, competent — efficient, methodical, prepared. There was just one detail he had not accounted for. The phone in his front pocket.
The Chimney Burglar
Barcelona, 2014. A man decides to break into a clothing store. His chosen route: the chimney. His chosen preparation: removing all of his clothes, on the logic that being naked would make him narrower.
The Cocaine Wheelchair
Dublin Airport, 2019. A man arrives in a wheelchair. He says he can't walk. Airport assistance staff push him through the terminal — the same way they push hundreds of other passengers every day. Nobody looks twice. Which is exactly what he was counting on.
The World's Worst Getaway
Marseille, 2018. Three men rob a jewelry store. The robbery goes perfectly. Everything after that goes catastrophically wrong.
Three Crimes, Zero Brain Cells
Three countries. Three criminals. Zero combined IQ.
The Facebook Burglar
In 2012, a burglar broke into a house in the Dutch town of Drachten. He stole valuables. He took electronics. And then — for reasons that defy all logic — he sat down at the victim's computer and logged into his own Facebook account.
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