“I’ve got another story for you,” Detective Ted McDonald told us at a recent barbecue for America’s Dumbest Criminals personnel in Brunswick, Georgia. “Adam Watson and I had to serve a warrant for cashing a stolen check on a man that lived here in Brunswick. I remember it because of the heat that day. It must have been a hundred. In fact, it was so hot that I saw two dogs fighting over a tree.”
He smiled.
“As we arrived at the man’s house and began to go up on the front porch, a dog starts barking. About this time a man comes from around the back of the house to see what the dog is barking at. It was us.”
“Robert Norton?” the officers asked the man.
“Yeah, I’m Robert Norton. What can I do for you guys?”
“Mr. Norton, we have a warrant for your arrest for receiving and cashing a stolen check.”
“Nah . . . you’ve got the wrong man.” he said, shaking his head. “I never cashed a stolen check in my life. What makes you guys think I did something like that?”
“Well sir,” Officer McDonald said, holding up the canceled check from the bank. “You forged the name the check was in on the front. But on the back, when you endorsed it, you signed your real name. And you provided the teller with your driver’s license, complete with your current address.”
“You weren’t thinking too clearly at that moment, were you?” Watson asked.
“Let me see that check,” the man said. He looked it over pretty good, front and back. Then he shook his head in disbelief and frustration.
“I’d never done anything like this before,” he told the two detectives. “I guess when she asked me for my I.D. I just went into check-cashing mode. I can’t believe I did that . . . pretty dumb, huh?”
“Pretty dumb,” the officers echoed in unison. “Let’s go.”