Nathan Williams
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There will always be that little voice in the back of your head telling you, "I can take this punk. I'm Batman." But when the law can't or won't help us, the results aren't pretty. We're not condoning this kind of behavior (our lawyers were adamant on us making that clear), but we would be lying if we said we didn't chuckle at some occasional illicit acts of retribution. For instance ...
Package stealing is getting is so bad that putting something over your soiled undershirt, driving to a poorly stocked brick and mortar outlet, and dealing with fellow humans is starting to look attractive. But Jaireme Barrow of Tacoma, Washington was not about to resort to such extremes. After local police said they couldn't help him (despite Jaireme showing them footage of thieves constantly raiding his stoop), he realized all he needed was a box of 12-gauge ammunition.
No, not like that. Sensing an opportunity to scare some fools straight and net himself some YouTube revenue in the process, Barrow rigged a series of fake packages on his porch with a bunch of blank shotgun shells. Of course, the perpetrator didn't know they were blanks. He might not have left with any ill-gotten merch that day, but he did leave with a package in his pants.
Modern warfare is carried out online as much as it is on the battlefield. A cursory scroll through Twitter is enough to confirm that. The Boston Marathon bombers claimed they learned how to make explosives from Al-Qaeda's online magazine, because apparently terrorists are taking their business models from Gwyneth Paltrow now. Seriously, the magazine is called Inspire. We can't wait to hear their sex tips.
Amidst this hurricane of insanity, a hacker known simply as "Jester" has made a hobby of infiltrating terrorist websites and defacing them, shutting them down altogether, or covertly stealing their information. After the mass murder at the Charlie Hebdo office, he even posted mocking cartoons on terrorist websites, one depicting a murdered cartoonist sucking face with a Muslim man.
Charlie HebdoStay classy, Charlie.
To date, Jester has eliminated 170 websites, tagging each one with "Tango Down" -- a military term for an enemy that's been wiped out. He also shares any information he's gleaned with the relevant authorities. You'd think those authorities would discourage such illegal and potentially destructive behavior, but the U.S. government has thus far left him alone. Possibly because they also think he's awesome.
D'Andre Rivers was having a bad day when somebody stole his wallet, but that was the least of his problems. Soon his credit card was charged $2,000 worth of purchases, and his license was used to rent a car. In a boring world, the story would end there. Identity theft is a difficult crime to investigate, and most cases never yield an arrest because police are preoccupied with "more severe" crimes. By all rights, Rivers should have spent his next few months arguing with the bank, buying a chain for his wallet, and repeatedly denying he's into ska every time someone sees his wallet chain. But instead of taking it lying down, Rivers went full Miami Vice on his adversary.
Armed only with the info his impostor had left with the rental car agency, Rivers nonchalantly rang him up, pretending to be interested in a drug deal. He figured that the type of guy who steals wallets and commits credit card fraud might also be down to traffic in illegal narcotics, and wouldn't you know it, he was right. The pickpocket agreed to meet up at a local mall to make a deal with a complete stranger, because you don't get far in that line of work without taking some chances.
Having done all the legwork, Rivers called the cops to finish the job, but he and a couple friends decided to stick around to make sure everything worked out. And maybe also toss out a few CSI-style one-liners. It's a good thing they did, because the perp tried to escape and put up a fight when Rivers chased him down. From the look of his mugshot, though, it wasn't enough.
Hillsborough County Sheriff's OfficeIt's a lot harder to pass off a stolen ID when you have the wrong number of teeth.
The police showed up just in time to save the thief a further ass-whooping, Rivers saved the state of Florida thousands of dollars, and a career con man was sent back to prison with some painful regrets. All in a day's work, Tubbs.
Related: 7 People Who Took Justice Into Their Own (Insane) Hands
Phone scams are experiencing a new golden age. At this point, you'd probably be surprised if you did recognize a number in your incoming calls. Well, in 2017, redditor YesItWasDataMined had enough. Irked by a fraudulent IRS con, they hit the scammer with a program that hackers call a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
The program bombards the target -- in this case, the spammer's phone number -- with a flood of calls, effectively tying up the line indefinitely. Hanging up is not an option; you just keep getting calls, at a rate of 28 per second in this instance. That's right, they spammed the spammers. They also recorded the other side of the calls, documenting the scammer's nervous breakdown.
And that's basically all we know about YesItWasDataMined. They created a series of YouTube videos and Reddit posts about their reverse scam, then disappeared into the night. They were the hero we deserved, but not the one we needed. Or wait ... the one we needed but didn't deserve? What the hell was that Dark Knight quote trying to say again?
Related: 25 Times Internet Vigilantes Decided Not To Be Terrible
A clerical error resulted in 70,000 pounds being lost from British farmer David Cannon's bank account, leaving him on the verge of bankruptcy. After what we presume was a stern but impeccably mannered phone call (he's still British, after all), the bank refused to correct the error, insisting that his son had authorized the transactions. Cannon filed a lawsuit, but he was a now very poor farmer going up against a national financial institution. He knew his odds were slim. So he started spraying them with manure instead.
In a series of four attacks, he dumped a total 10 tons of shit at various branches of National Westminster Bank. He also barricaded himself inside, blocked entrances, and nailed doors shut at seemingly every NatWest location within driving distance. He did this over the course of 10 years. Every time he got mad about it, he loaded up the poopwagon and unleashed smelly hell. Was any of this legal? Of course not! Why on Earth would it be?
Cannon was eventually convicted of a load of crimes, hilariously including "failure to stop." Fail to stop, he certainly did. It was only after reaching a settlement of 300,000 pounds mere weeks before the High Court was to rule on the case that he agreed to a ceasefire. The now-71-year-old man was sentenced to 120 days in prison and a total of about 1,000 pounds in fines, but such is the price of glory.
For more, check out Weird How Everyone President Donald Trump Knows Does Crime:
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