A young Vietnamese woman recently shocked police after admitting that she had paid someone to cut off her left hand and foot, so she could claim a health insurance payoff of roughly $180,000.

The extreme insurance scam reportedly began in May, when a 30-year-old woman named only as Ly Thi N convinced an acquaintance to cut of her left arm and foot in exchange for 50 million dong ($2,200). The plan was to make it look like she had been hit by a train, so the cold-blooded accomplice, named as Doan Van D, acted like a bystander who just happened to find her injured near a railroad in Hanoi. He was the one who called an ambulance and notified the police about the “accident”.

Ly Thi N was found lying in the ground with a severed hand and leg, and the woman told police that she had wandering near the railway track when a train passed by and dragged her under it. Doan Van D, who she described as a total stranger, just happened to pass by and ended up saving her life. At first, everyone thought that the victim was lucky to be alive, but policemen investigating the accident became suspicious after learning that the woman and the 21-year-old who allegedly found her by accident actually knew each other quite well. Read More »

Two notorious Indian criminals recently detained for forging documents and scamming people have managed to secure bail by doing what they do best – faking documents signed by nonexistent cops and guarantors.

Mohammed Lukman Shaikh, 48, and Bashir Mulla, 62, both with long criminal records under their belts, were put behind bars a little over a month ago for forging passports and other Government-issued documents. The two were so well-known for their document-faking talents that during their trial hearings, the Thane court warned police to recheck documents submitted during the proceedings, as both had a history of fabricating papers and cheating the authorities. Even so, Shaikh and Mulla managed to use their skills to secure bail and now they are nowhere to be found.

The two con artists were in judicial custody when they managed to secure bail and walk free. This happened a month ago, but the police just learned about it three days ago, after Vijay Sanap, a constable attached to Srinagar police station in Thane, discovered something suspicious in the paperwork of their case.

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Ronnie Music Jr., 45, is facing life in prison after pleading guilty to investing part of his lottery winnings into a crystal methamphetamine drug ring. In 2015, Music had won $3 million in a Georgia scratch-off lottery game. You know what they say about pushing your luck. Don’t!

Of all the things he could have done with his $3 million dollar lotto prize, Ronnie Music Jr., of Waycross, Georgia, decided to invest part of it in a drug business. Evidence presented in the case against him revealed that he had worked with a criminal group to gain access to high quantities of methamphetamine and distribute it all throughout Georgia. His co-conspirators were caught trying to sell approximately 11 pounds of meth, worth more than $500,000 on the streets, and during the investigation Music was identified as the supplier. At his home base in Ware County agents found over $1 million worth of methamphetamine, several firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and $600,000 in cash.

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Residents of the Daybreak community, in South Jordan, Utah, have come up with a brilliant strategy to ward off thieves this Christmas. They’ve taken to placing fake Amazon packages filled with junk on their front porches, in order to keep the real stuff safe.

According to realtor Kroger Menzer, Daybreak is a tight-knit community of about 4,000 homes and 15,000 people who all know each other very well well. For the past few years, many of them faced the same problem during the holidays – thieves would steal the packages that were delivered to their front door. So when a resident named Jeff posted the fake-package idea on Facebook, it caught on pretty quickly.

“When Jeff came up with the idea, it spread like wildfire,” Menzer said. “The post spread to Riverton and Herriman. That’s why it’s going to work, because it’s not just a half a dozen homes doing it. It’s a whole community.”  The contents of the decoy packages will vary.  Menzer says some people plan to put in old electronics while others are going with rocks. A few altruistic folks want to throw in some clothes, which might eventually be donated to the needy. And some people want to use the idea to actually catch thieves, so they’re installing tracking devices on the boxes.

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Although she looks harmless, 68-year-old Chisako Kakehi is probably one of the most dangerous women in the world. Nicknamed ‘The Black Widow of Kyoto’ by the media, she is believed to be responsible for the deaths of eight men who were romantically involved with her at some point in time.

Kyoto-based Kakehi is currently in police custody, for the fourth time in her life. According to Kyoto police, Kakehi has been in relationships with over 10 men, eight of whom eventually ended up dead. So far, she has been charged with the murder of a former husband in Kyoto and a boyfriend in Osaka, as well as the attempted murder of a man in Kobe.

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Believe it or not, the villagers of Hokse, Nepal, are so poor that they’re forced to sell their own organs in order to make ends meet. The practice is so common there that the place has been nicknamed ‘Kidney Village’.

Organ brokers regularly visit the village and its surrounding areas and convince cash-strapped locals to part with one of their healthy kidneys. These agents are notorious for tricking innocent villagers into traveling to Southern India to have their operations. They cook up all sorts of tales, telling the poor villagers that humans only need one kidney for survival or that the organ, once removed, will grow back! That particular trick was used to fool Geetha, a mother-of-four who sold her kidney for only $2,000.

“For ten years people came to our village trying to convince us to sell our kidneys but I always said no,” Geetha said. But as her family grew, her desire to provide them with a house got stronger. “I have always wanted my own house and a piece of land, and with more children, I really needed it.” So she traveled with her sister-in-law, an organ broker, to India, and underwent the operation.

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If you happen to visit shops, commercial establishments, and even police stations in Japan, you might be baffled to discover bright orange baseball-sized orbs, generally placed next to the cash register. But they won’t be for sale, because believe it or not, they’re actually anti-crime devices!

The balls, locally known as bohan yu kara boru, derive their bright hue from the orange paint that fills them. In the event of a theft or robbery, store employees are supposed to fling the balls at the perpetrator. When the balls hit the thief, they will burst, marking him with orange paint and making it easy for the police to identify and apprehend him.

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A British Man recently spent six hours getting a tattoo of Jesus worth £250 ($370) at a tattoo shop in Luton, England and simply walked out without paying. The artist who inked him said that the man claimed to have paid another member of staff, and then slipped away during the confusion. But here’s the real shocker – not only did he avoid paying for his Jesus tattoo, he actually stole an additional £1,000 from the store!

According to Red INC owner Joanne Baum, the man already had the words ‘Only God can judge me’ tattooed on the other hand. “The irony is that he clearly decided to embrace Christianity and the major ethos is ‘Thou shalt not steal,’” Baum said. “He planned the theft from us and he completely planned not to pay for the tattoo. To have someone sit there for six hours talking about their life intimately and then do this is unbelievable. He was there chatting about his wife and daughter, it is not acceptable.”

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When this Brazilian woman stopped on the street to speak to a reporter about the rising crime rate in the area, I bet she didn’t expect to give him live demo! As she was complaining on live TV about the incompetent police force, a thief ran up to her and attempted to snatch her gold necklace. The whole thing was recorded on camera – I’d call it downright hilarious if only it wasn’t so appalling.

The incident took place in broad daylight on a busy street in Rio de Janeiro. The video clip shows the woman speaking to an interviewer from RJTV. Just a few seconds into the interview, a young boy hurls himself at the woman, snatches her necklace and runs across the busy street. The woman yells in shock; the reporter’s reaction is instantaneous – he yells too, pushes the woman aside with his fist and attempts to chase the thief down.

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Sometimes, all you need is a message from an angel to turn your life around. And it doesn’t really matter if that angel actually happens to be a human being; it’s the timing that really counts. Perhaps no one realizes this fact better than a group of 15 to 22-year-olds in Mexico, who are risking their lives by going out into the streets as angels, in an attempt to change their society. The ‘Messenger Angels’, as they call themselves, are young evangelical Christians who take a message of peace to public places in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s most violent city.

The messenger angels are all dressed the same – hair combed back, white make up, white robes and white wings. They stand at busy intersections and places where crimes usually take place, holding up signs that display messages of peace – like ‘Looking for God’s Forgiveness’. “We get people’s attention because instead of doing bad things, like other young people, we are doing this because we want Juarez to change,” said Cynthia Gutierrez, one of the angels. The city has a population of 1.3 million and over 9,000 murders in the past three and a half years. One of the boy angels said: “In society, they’ve separated us a lot. As well as in our families. That’s why we try to share a message to drug dealers, hitmen, raiders.”

“Well, some people think we are right, others think we are wrong. I think this is right, to create more consciousness in every person that’s going down the wrong path,” added another angel. He was holding up a sign that read: ‘Chapo Guzman, Time is Short, Repent’. Some of the other signs say: ‘Police-killer: Stop it! From: Jesus Christ’, ‘Corrupt Police Officer: Seek God’ and ‘Authorities: nothing can be done without Christ’. I suppose messages from God don’t really get more direct than this.

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On the third Thursday of every month, some of the world’s greatest crime specialists meet up in Philadelphia to try and solve some of the toughest murder cases in history, over a delicious lunch. This is the Vidocq Society.

Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Kojack, those guys from CSI, they are all brilliant minds on their own, but what if they all got together to solve the toughest criminal cases in history? They’d have a much better chance of success, at least in theory. That’s what the Vidocq Society is all about, bringing together the most brilliant minds in criminology and trying to get to the bottom of hundreds of thousands of unsolved cases. Once a month, the members of this 20-year-old exclusive club assemble in an old Victorian dining room, to enjoy fine cuisine and talk about unsolved murders. As their motto (Cuisine & Crime Solving ) suggests, crime is always on the menu at Vidocq Society meetings.

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