5
The Kidnapping of Baby Badass

The "Crime":
Christmas 2008 wasn't so jolly for Miami resident Meagan McCormic. Instead of the normal annoyance of fake smiling over a God-awful sweater someone bought her, she had a regular silent nightmare on her hands: her son had been abducted.
Meagan said she had left six-month-old Riley with Camille, his gap-toothed, French nanny. When the au pair absconded with the tot, nearly 20 police officers bravely sacrificed their own priceless yuletide memories for a statewide Christmas Eve baby-hunt. Mom described the kid as having a mohawk, one tooth and a fake tattoo.

Wait, what?
The Facts:
While there are definitely some snaggle-toothed, Brie-loving babysnatchers running amok out there, they certainly weren't near McCormic or her awesomely coiffed son. Why? Because the darn kid never existed.

Riley seen here on the swings.
Say you're having trouble getting over an ex. Whereas most of us choose to wank the pain away or drown our sorrows in fermented grain juice, McCormic refused to accept that her ex-boyfriend just wasn't that into her. To win her former beau back, she pulled one of the oldest tricks in the book: the unplanned mohawked pregnancy. And why go through all the trouble of actually having a kid when you can just tell him you did?

McCormic's plan fell to tatters when she forgot one eensy-weensy fact: maybe, just maybe, her ex would actually want to meet the tyke. When her boyfriend came down from Massachusetts to meet the lil' rebel, McCormic scrambled to concoct a tale involving an evil French crone with pissoir-poor dental hygiene. Presumably she made the nanny French to capitalize on law enforcement's latent Francophobia, but hatred of fine wine and semi-soft cheeses can blind your average Florida cop with rage for only so long.

A Frenchman, in a rare moment of not surrendering.
Once police realized they could drive their cruisers through the holes in McCormic's story, she was arrested. Her crime? Filing a false police report, and presumably inventing a baby too awesome to actually exist.

4
Marriage Counseling, Swedish Style

The "Crime"
In October 2008, a 43-year-old Swedish man went to the German police with one heckuva tale: he'd been abducted from Sweden and transported to Germany in a Volvo. After stealing his money and credit cards, the Swede's captors unceremoniously dumped him at the Nuremberg railway station. Authorities initially believed his account, seeing as how there's nothing especially exciting to do in Nuremberg, other than stand trial for war crimes.

"Weather's fine. Wish you were here."
The Facts:
After Nuremberg police ordered a manhunt, the Swede admitted that he might have embellished things a little. The truth was, he just really, really, really didn't want to talk with his wife.
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