When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.
A pair of Michigan robbers entered a record store, waving their revolvers in the air. One yelled "NOBODY MOVES!!" His partner moved, so......he shot him. "I [was] a little nervous," he was quoted as saying.
In Great Britain in 1997, a young man decided to blackmail a well-known supermarket chain by threatening to contaminate the foods on sale there. He sent a note demanding 30,000 pounds to be paid into his bank account and provided, (just to make sure that they got the right amount into the right account) his bank account number. Not surprisingly he was soon caught and convicted.
Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.