A staple of movie fiction is the so-called ‘criminal genius’. From Lex Luthor to Hannibal Lecter, these supposed megaminds have hatched plot from their secret lairs and outsmarted the good guys for decades. The only problem is that crims are almost never that smart.
Occasionally there’s a Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, or a Leopold and Loeb, but even these guys, when it comes to criminality, aren’t as smart as they clearly liked to believe. Leopold and Loeb, for instance, not only made rookie mistakes in trying to cover up their thrill-kill, but just couldn’t help all-but openly bragging about it. Con-man Frank Abagnale, of Catch Me If You Can fame, is supposed to have an IQ of 140, but, like so many of his alleged exploits, it seems likely to be more in his imagination than reality.
Real criminals, on the other hand, just aren’t that smart. There’s a strong streak of rat-cunning, for sure. But if they were as smart as we’re led to believe, then why do they even need to turn to crime to make money? But even rat-cunning can only get you so far: even the most notorious crims have ended up behind bars because of unbelievably dumb mistakes.
Such as jumping bail and absconding to, not countries that are notorious for not having extradition treaties with the country you’re fleeing, but to one which does. That was drug dealer Tony Mokbel’s first mistake, when he fled trial and hid out in Greece. His second was believing that international phone calls couldn’t be bugged.
In May 2007, he rang a member of The Enterprise, his drug syndicate back in Melbourne, asking, “Hey, buddy, what’s happening?” He said he was at Starbucks at the Glyfada Piazza.
Listening in the Purana taskforce office was Jim Coghlan, who was married into a Greek family. He instantly realised Mokbel was hiding in Athens. Further phone calls led police to the Delfinia restaurant, where Mokbel was arrested in a bad wig.
Foolishly thinking certain telephones couldn’t be bugged was the downfall of corrupt cop William Stephen “Dingy” Harris. A sergeant at Hawthorn police station in Melbourne, Harris was known to the underworld as “The Captain”, who used his clout to protect hashish imports of more than 300 kilos a time.
The syndicate would pay him $300,000 a pop. Dingy’s identity was known by few, and to protect himself he would never use the Hawthorn police station phone to talk business, preferring to use the public one across the road, believing it couldn’t be bugged. By the time he knew he was wrong, the jig was well and truly up.
In the secret investigation code-named Rock, police recorded 14,000 phone calls and in October 1987, Dingy was sentenced to 14 years’ jail, where he was allowed a couple of phone calls a week.
But where Tony Mokbel was a cunning jailhouse lawyer, his associate, drug boss and serial killer Carl Williams, was not exactly noted as a brains trust. Possibly his dumbest move was welching on paying his hitmen. Of contracts worth a total of $400,000 to hitman ‘The Runner’, Williams paid just $54,000.
You shortchange hitmen at your peril. The Runner became a prosecution witness and was one reason Williams eventually had to plead guilty to several murders.
The third mistake was when Williams wanted to do a deal, and he believed informing on an allegedly corrupt cop would not be seen by the underworld as being a snitch. But one gangster thought Williams needed to take certain secrets to the grave. In 2010, he was beaten to death inside prison by fellow inmate Matt Johnson.
Then there was the six-man team of burglars who planned to break into the Sigma pharmaceutical company and steal amphetamines with a street value of $166 million. They did, in fact, break into the plant 25 times.
When they were setting up CCTV monitors in the ceiling, they found a system that had been set up by police to watch them.
Rather than walk away, they convinced themselves it was the management that was using the system to monitor staff.
One was recorded saying: “Flash a brown eye at them. It was our idea to put a camera in, anyway.”
In September 1996, they were arrested at the scene by the special operations group as they broke into Sigma.
When you’re a terrorist planning to plant bombs, it always pays to check your watch, as Hamas found, earlier this year, when they planned to blow up crowded buses during peak hour in Tel Aviv. Except that they set the timers for PM, not AM. Consequently, the empty buses blew up in an empty depot at night.
Similarly, terrorist Hagop Levonian planned to blow up the Turkish consulate in Melbourne in 1986.
He was supposed to set the timer for a few hours. Sadly, he stuffed up and was blown to pieces. Forensic experts found a piece of skin the size of a 5¢ piece at the blast site that matched a fingerprint on an invoice book from Levonian. The only other remains found were a pair of feet in the bomber’s shoes.
The proverbial smoking boots.
