Mind-boggling mischief: The world's weirdest heists

Bonsai trees - The heist included a rare 400-year-old shimpaku tree, which was actually due to be entered in a Japanese beauty competition in February 2019. It alone was worth over US$90,000. The bonsai owners are heartbroken, one of whom said, "We treated these miniature trees like our children,” adding that losing these trees is like losing their limbs, and asking that at the very least the thieves give the trees enough water.

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Instant ramen - Approximately US$98,000 worth of stolen ramen noodle packages were recovered in a 53-foot (16-m) trailer parked outside of a US gas station.

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Instant ramen - Sources estimate that, since ramen packs can cost up to around US$2, the trailer potentially held about 30,000 packs of noodles! Are these food thieves just really hungry college students?

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A glacier - Most of the world is trying to preserve the glaciers in Patagonia, but one Chilean entrepreneur decided in 2012 that he wanted it for himself. Armed with a refrigerated truck, he illegally stole 1,000 lbs (454 kg) of ice from the Jorge Montt glacier, which he reportedly planned to sell as “designer” ice cubes.

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An entire bridge - In 2011, scrap metal thieves in the US, somehow stole a 50-foot (15-m), 40-ton steel bridge!

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An entire bridge - The culprits supposedly used a blowtorch to detach the beams. The bridge will reportedly cost US$100,000 to replace, though the thieves likely only made a fraction of that by selling the scraps.

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Hollywood Walk of Fame stars - Four of the stars have been stolen from the Walk of Fame—and they weigh about 300 lbs (136 kg) each!

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Dessert - A sweet-toothed burglar got himself into a sticky situation in Tokyo after he was caught illegally eating his way through almost US$50,000 worth of ice cream, chocolate, puddings, and other sweets. It seems like the perfect crime because you can ingest all the evidence, right?

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Dessert - Well, it seems he bit off more than he could chew. After gobbling down over 250 desserts in a total of more than 40 incidents, Yasuhiro “Sugar” Wakashima was found out using DNA evidence from leftovers and crumbs—yes, he left a literal trail of breadcrumbs!

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Napoleon’s penis - Yes, you read that right. According to TIME, Napoleon Bonaparte’s penis was taken during his 1821 autopsy, and it made its way to a Corsican priest. The appendage’s last known transaction was in 2007 when a daughter inherited her father’s most precious item, which he’d bought for US$3,000. She has reportedly had at least one offer of US$100,000 from an interested buyer.

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Another bridge - A group of metal scrappers in the Czech Republic held fast to the “fake it till you make it” ideology, and got away with dismantling a 10-ton bridge in Slavkov in 2012 by dressing up as engineers and spinning a story about a cycle route coming through, complete with forged documents. Theft in plain sight!

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Corn - Thieves in Brazil stole 110,000 lbs (49,895 kg) of corn off a moving train in 2011. As if they were in an action film, they reportedly slowed the train by greasing the tracks, then stole the corn containers using a tow truck.

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A 3,000-lb (1,360 kg) bell - A Buddhist temple in Tacoma, Washington, USA, discovered that their copper bell and its hand-carved wooden frame, altogether 12 ft (3.6 m) tall, were stolen in 2005. Authorities still don't know how they did it!

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A 3,000-lb (1,360 kg) bell - About a year later, however, the bell was returned by a man who bought it at an auction when the thief tried to sell the priceless object for much less than its value.

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More pumpkins than you’ll ever need - In the days leading up to Halloween 2016, nearly 200 pumpkins were stolen from a family-run farm stand in New Jersey, USA, estimated at a value of up to US$3,000.

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Einstein’s brain - On April 18, 1955, after dying from an aneurysm, one of the greatest scientific thinkers of the 20th century had his brain stolen by the pathologist on call at Princeton Hospital!

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Einstein’s brain - Dr. Thomas Harvey began conducting an autopsy and went against Einstein’s wishes (to be cremated with his brain inside his skull) by keeping it for several decades and cutting it up into over 200 pieces, which are now on display at various museums.

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Empire State Building - In one of the greatest heists to ever occur on American soil, the US$1.89 billion 102-story Art Deco skyscraper was stolen!

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Empire State Building - In December 2008, and in under 90 minutes, the New York Daily News transferred the landmark building's ownership deed with a forged notary stamp.

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Empire State Building - They named the fake buyer "Nelots Properties," which is "stolen" spelled backwards. They also listed Fay Wray, the star of the original 'King Kong,' as a witness.

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Empire State Building - The journalists did it to prove that there was a loophole in the law regarding the city’s protocol for property transactions which didn't require clerks to verify information.

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Empire State Building - They gave it back the next day, of course, but their heist has gone down in history as one of the most genius and harmless thefts in history.

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Fake bison testicles - Edmonton, Canada, hosted the World Championships in Athletics in 2001, and in honor of the celebration the city erected fiberglass bison statues around town painted in the colors of the participating countries. Two men were caught in possession of a pair of testicles from one of the statues, but that didn’t explain how 19 others also had their fiberglass genital glands severed. The mystery was never solved.

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A battle tank - Shawn Nelson, snuck onto the San Diego National Guard base in 1995 and pried his way into an M60A3 Patton tank with a mere crowbar!

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A battle tank - Nelson went on a rampage with the tank, destroying road signs, traffic lights, utility poles, fire hydrants, and entire vehicles—including an RV. After 23 minutes of madness, he was shot and killed by police.

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X-rays - In 2013, thieves were caught looting over 15,000 x-rays from a hospital warehouse in Detroit, USA. One of them was a former warehouse employee, and they managed to escape before anyone could stop them. Why x-rays? They were reportedly stolen for the silver in them, though little did the bandits know, the extraction process is more expensive than the silver itself.

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Dog poop - In 2015, a man in Des Moines, Iowa, USA, tried to steal a truck, but found it more difficult than he thought. In a panic, he grabbed a bag from the bed of the truck so as not to leave empty handed. It turned out to be dog feces, valued at US$1.

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Maple syrup - In what is now known as the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist (as the most valuable heist in the country’s history), a group of men, over the course of a few months from 2011-12, stole US$14.1 million worth of maple syrup from a storage facility in Quebec. That’s six million lbs (2.7 million kg)! Twenty-six people were arrested, and the ringleader received an eight-year prison sentence and multimillion-dollar fine.

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Sex toys - In 2013, an American woman’s trunk was robbed of US$500 worth of sex toys! She was allegedly gathering the toys for a bachelorette party—so she says.

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Birds’ nests - Edible bird’s nests are prized delicacies in Chinese cuisine, as it has a high nutritional value and it’s a vital ingredient in the popular bird’s nest soup. Stealing and smuggling the delicacy has been an ongoing issue, and is reportedly on the rise due to high demand and lucrative prices. In 1992, about US$178,000 worth of bird’s nests were stolen from a Hong Kong restaurant, and just this year US$230,000 worth of the product was confiscated by Hong Kong customs after being discovered inside an air duct on a cross-border coach.

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Manholes - In 1990, around 200 manhole covers were stolen in Los Angeles. The 150-lb (68 kg) discs are apparently commonly stolen and resold as scraps, which also happened in Long Beach in 2008. The covers are sold for about US$10 each, but can cost up to US$500 each to replace!

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White tiger statues - Two large white tiger statues were taken from someone’s front yard in Gladstone, Australia, giving a whole new meaning to cat burglars. “Seems like people will take anything if it’s not chained down these days,” the baffled homeowner said.

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Tide detergent - While many thought the detergent was being secured in stores out of fear that people would ingest it as part of a viral challenge, it’s actually in response to the laundry soap’s value on the black market. One con in Minnesota reportedly lifted US$25,000 worth of the detergent over 15 months before he was arrested.

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Tide detergent - The Tide currency peaked in 2012, and according to the Associated Press, officers say that drug dealers started urging their clientele to pay with the bottles of detergent in lieu of cash. Tide was adopted into organized retail crime, and it became a popular target because one bottle can cost up to US$20 retail, and it was allegedly selling on the street for between US$5 and US$10.

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Godzilla - A Tokyo movie studio discovered that their 132-lb (60 kg) Godzilla statue was missing. It was found 10 days later outside of the city.

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Oscars - In 2000, a shipment of 55 Academy Awards was stolen from a loading dock in a Los Angeles suburb, just weeks before the 72nd Academy Awards ceremony.

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Oscars - Days later, Willie Fulgear found 52 of them while rummaging through a dumpster. He was awarded US$50,000 and two seats at the ceremony for reporting his discovery.

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Oranges - In Seville, Spain, authorities engaged in a high-speed car chase before eventually pulling over three vehicles for driving erratically, but what they thought was just dangerous driving turned out to be an orange heist of over 9,000 lbs (4082 kg) of fruit.

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Oranges - The family responsible claimed they had been "picking oranges up off the ground as they traveled," but the massive amount led authorities to believe the thieves were planning on selling the fruit on the black market. They eventually tracked the oranges back to a warehouse in the nearby town of Carmona.

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Tastee Cheese -

In 2016, an 18-year-old in New Jersey, USA, was charged with stealing more than US$160,000 worth of canned Jamaican cheese spread. His bail was set at US$150,000! He obviously made a dairy big mistake.

(Photo: Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0)

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Bull semen - In 2016, nearly US$50,000 worth of prized bull semen was stolen from a truck in Turlock, California.

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Bull semen - The thieves took almost 3,500 units of top-of-the-line bull sperm—months of work for one bull sperm collector—which is enough to impregnate almost 1,000 cows.

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Nutella - The hazelnut spread is so desirable that in 2017, 11,000 lbs (5,000 kg) of Nutella was stolen from a parked truck trailer in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. The Guardian reports that the heist equaled roughly US$18,000 or 6,875 jars.

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An entire house - A Houston couple in February 2018 called the police to report that their entire vacation home in Kentucky was stolen!

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An entire house - The prefabricated home had one bedroom and one bathroom. Later reports indicate that the home was repossessed by a company who claims the building wasn’t paid off by the previous owner.

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A beach - A slowly shrinking beach in Coral Spring, Jamaica, caught the attention of locals, and an investigation was set in motion. Eventually police deduced that people were stealing the sand, likely to sell to hotels. According to The Guardian, the amount of sand stolen added up to 500 truck-loads.

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Buttons - In 1992, a woman was arrested for allegedly stealing over US$300 of buttons off of clothes in a Miami department store. Even weirder, the woman turned out to be the wife of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was on trial for cocaine-trafficking at the time.

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An enormous inflatable gorilla - A car dealership in the US reported that their 350-lb (160 kg) 12-ft-tall (3.6 m) inflatable gorilla was stolen in 2010. Perhaps the thieves thought they were just monkeying around when they pried the gorilla from the roof, but giant creature was valued at US$10,000!

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A lawn - When you leave for vacation, you always run the risk of a robbery. For one woman in Alberta, Canada, she returned to find something peculiar missing. Her previously grassy lawn was missing, replaced with a pile of dirt. The Calgary Herald reports that the “thief” was eventually revealed to be a hired landscaper who’d gone to the wrong address.

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594 pigs - In 2011, a Minnesota farm was robbed of 594 pigs, worth more than US$100,000! The pig thefts, common at the time, allegedly occurred due to the spike in pork prices.

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Toes - A New Zealand man decided to take home a souvenir from the Body Worlds exhibit from the Auckland exhibit, swiping two dead toes off a cadaver. While you might be rightfully confused as to his motive, this set of dead toes, which have been returned to the exhibit, are reportedly valued at US$5,500.

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A shark - In a truly mind-boggling 2008 case, an aquatics shop owner in England noticed the door was open to the converted garage where he kept a pair of rare Australian marbled cat sharks and their babies. Someone, somehow, managed to catch the two-foot-long (0.6 m) mother shark from the five-foot-tall (1.5 m) aquarium and carry her away. Reports say it would’ve been difficult to catch the male shark, though the pair together might be worth as much as US$20,000.

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Rocket engine - Apparently an employee from NASA wasn’t making enough money, and decided to steal an RL-10 rocket engine worth US$20,000. The engine was recovered in 2011 after it was spotted being sold on eBay, but NASA hadn’t even noticed. As it turns out, crime is actually harder than rocket science.

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Church pulpit, organ, and curtains - In 1992, a vengeful pastor reportedly wanted to get back at his church when the congregation voted him out, so he showed up with a moving truck and stole the pulpit, the organ, and even the curtains. He apparently left the piano because the church hadn’t finished paying it off.

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Marla Maples’ shoes - In 1992, Marla Maples, Donald Trump’s then-girlfriend, discovered that 40 pairs of her shoes were missing from her closet. It turned out that her publicist, Chuck Jones, had been lifting them to feed his foot fetish.

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Half a human head - A premedical student at Adelphi University in New York was arrested in 1992 after his landlord discovered half a human head during an eviction process. To everyone’s relief, the student admitted he stole it from one of his classes.

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Playground wood chips - In 2015, a Welsh school’s playground was discovered to have dirt under the swings where there should have been wood chips. Police speculated that the thieves would try to resell the hot chips at a low price.

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A garden shed - A Welsh woman reported in 2015 that her entire back garden shed had been stolen, which is weird enough, but the thieves turned their noses up at the gardening tools and lay them on the grass before bolting.

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