Crime School: Don't Call Cops, Or Sue Your Victims. Will Just Make Things Worse

She might have PTSD, but it's probably because
of her stupidity, and NOT because she's a (fake)
bank robbery victim, says cops.  

Just because I like the dark side, I sometimes offer pro tips to criminals to make their "jobs" easier and I'm doing that today.  

Here goes: It probably doesn't help to call the cops on your victim, or sue them.

I'll give you two case studies. One was in Seattle recently, when a woman called the cops and said a man was following and harassing her.

Sounds like a good reason to call the cops, right?

It turns out the man was annoyed with the woman for stealing his smart phone. When she and her companion stole it, the victim objected and was assaulted because of his objections. The woman's doofus companion ran off, and the woman called the cops to complain about the "harassment",  says television station KOMO in Seattle. 

Trouble was, our cops first noticed the man in question had a number of cuts and bruises. Secondly, the cops found the victim's phone on our Dumb Criminal Of the Week.

Gee how did that happen?  Yeah, so the woman got in trouble for stealing and (surprise!) drug possession.  Police said she had three grams of crack with her. Which might have been impairing her judgement  bit, I don't know.

The second case study involves somebody named Aurora Barrera, of Downey, California, who used to work at Bank of America.

According to Bloomberg News:

"Barrera said that two men held her hostage and forced her to wear a bomb for the robbery in September, 2012. She said they made her remove money from the bank vault and place it outside the building, according to yesterday's statement. Authorities later determined the bomb was fake."

Barrera said she suffered post traumatic stress syndrome from the incident, and collected $45,537 in disability benefits and medical expenses from Bank of America's insurer.

It turns out she was in on the whole thing with the bank robbers, which lead us to this fun quote from the Bloomberg article:

"'It's shocking to think that Barrera, a trusted financial institution manager, would be a co-conspirator in a bank robbery and staged kidnapping, and then have the audacity to file a bogus workers' comp claim for traumatic stress and believe she could get away with it,' said California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones."

Yes, it looks our bank manager Barrera flunked Crime 101, but has plenty of time to take the class over, since it's lookin glike she might spend the next nine years in jail.