Charge
the brains

Ah, the quick-thinking criminal mastermind, deftly and without a moment’s hesitation coming up with the perfect ruse with which to evade his captors. Masterminds like, say, Darth Vader or Richard W. Obdyke. But while Vader might’ve used the Force to convince police to go about their business when found with a stolen credit card in his pocket, Obdyke had only his wits. And they were dim, at best. Faced with lawmen’s question about how a stolen card came to be in his pants, Obdyke stretched his imagination just above “Dunno,” and told police the pants were not his. And whose pants were they? That’s when Obdyke went with, “Dunno.”

Despite its brilliance, Collier County, Florida, police didn’t accept the 19-year-old Obdyke’s story as fact. Some keen detective work soon found the card was property of one Deborah Cahill, who claimed charges totalling about $160 were put on it since she’d forgotten it, most likely, at an area pizzeria—the very pizzeria at which Obdyke was employed.

Obdyke was later charged with a felony count of fraud.

by SCOTT SAXON