Dumb Criminals Should Not Steal Books

Don't let anyone kid you, crime does pay. Some criminals, especially, it seems, politicians get away with their crimes for years. Some are never caught; others are caught with cash-filled freezers in their Washington D.C. apartments and still escape justice. I suppose that proves how special congressional criminals are.

But when it comes to the rest of us, a successful criminal career generally comes only to those with a little more intelligence than the common street thug or armed robber. This fact of life has apparently just been learned by two young Louisiana women who have been accused of stealing some 4,000 books from Barnes & Noble bookstores in two states and reselling them to a New Orleans college book reseller.

Nola.com has the details - including pictures of the two women dumb enough to bring all the stolen books to the same college bookstore. I have to say that Chimes Textbook Exchange was awfully slow in figuring this scam out, though. Did they think these two were taking classes around the clock, seven days a week and actually owned all those books, even multiple copies of the same textbooks?

Authorities say Vatter, 33, of Metairie, and Tabora, 23, of Kenner, have admitted to stealing books from at least seven Barnes & Nobles stores in Louisiana and Mississippi - an estimated 4,000 books worth $325,000 since August, according to Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office incident and arrest reports. The two took their stolen tomes to Chimes, where they received 30 to 50 percent of the cover price.

[...]

"It's really fortunate that they tried to sell those books to us. If they sold them all over the place, we would have never known and they never would have been caught," he said.

Vanessa Tabora told detectives all the books she and a partner stole were resold at the same New Orleans book reseller...

So these two were stealing 15-20 books a day, books that had an average value of $80, and were able to hit Barnes & Noble for something like 4,000 books in all. It appears that they are smart enough to beat whatever theft prevention system (including employees) is in place at B&N, but stupid enough to bring all the stolen books to the same book reseller. And that decision was very, very stupid, indeed.

You are not congressional material, ladies.