7 'Whaaat' Crimes You Won't Believe Are True

Why would they need a fake beard if Adams was very real-bearded? Well, that's where it gets complicated. The plan was for Adams to secretly shave on the morning of the escape and then walk into a meeting room wearing the fake beard. He and the doppelganger would then switch beards and clothes, and Adams would walk out disguised as a lawyer. The plan went south because Gerry Adams' "Gerry Adams" disguise wasn't convincing enough.

While entering the meeting room, a guard noticed that Adams had a fake beard hooked over his ears. Sensing that this wasn't a sudden attack of alopecia, he raised the alarm, and the real Adams was nabbed in the parking lot. It must have been an awkward day on the yard when Adams surely confronted his fellow inmates with a sarcastic, "Sure, Gerry, we can totally make a realistic fake beard, Gerry," and possibly for the first time, a bunch of hardened felons had to feel bad about their thread skills.

These attacks were carried out by Shindo Renmei, a secret organization formed by Brazilian-Japanese nationalists who refused to admit that Japan had lost the Second World War. They published newspapers that spun a completely delusional narrative of victory about "a furious battle in Okinawan waters the Japanese Navy and Air Force destroyed about 400 Allied warships." Japan even got its own secret weapon in this fantastical retelling: the "High Frequency Bomb," which had wiped out U.S. troops on Okinawa. They circulated photographs supposedly showing President Truman bowing to the emperor.

This wasn't just some tiny group of weirdos. Shindo Renmei had at least 50,000 members, enough to relieve local stores of their whole stocks of red and white cloth for Japanese flags, intended to welcome Brazil's new Japanese overlords. The group was so powerful that the Brazilian government, following a disastrous meeting with its leaders, actually backed down and ordered the press not to publish any mention of Japan's unconditional surrender. So if a member of the community suggested that Japan might have possibly not conquered the world, they got an unfriendly visit from Shindo Renmei.

The killings tailed off after 1947, but the belief that Japan had won remained influential until 1950, when Olympic gold medalist swimmer Masanori Yusa made a high-profile visit to Brazil. When he was greeted by cheering crowds, he publicly expressed astonishment at the idea, humiliating Shindo Renmei. By 1955, the group could only muster 100 people for a demonstration calling for their repatriation to a victorious Japanese Empire. Presumably they had become impatient waiting for that slowpoke prince to arrive.

Instead the cops told them there was no record of ]Smith ever leaving the country. Remember the business partner? When Chris arrived to sign the deal, the guy apparently butchered him in their office and stole his half of the company. He then accessed Chris' email account and spent fully six months pretending to be him. The whole time his family thought they were talking to Chris, they were actually emailing with his murderer. Lesson learned: If a loved one starts claiming he's boinking a Bunny, he's delusional or dead. Either way, look into that, probably.

After employees finally sued over the regular aubergine beatings, Gluck was forced to step down, and shortly afterward, an audit revealed that almost $500,000 had gone missing from the cafeterias over the previous five years. Two employees claimed that Gluck had demanded they each hand over $100 per day from the tills, and his bank accounts showed a series of otherwise inexplicable cash deposits during the school term only. He was also allegedly caught on camera loading school food supplies into his truck for the catering business he ran on the side.

Actual losses may have been higher than the auditors detected, since many parents complained that their kids were sometimes double-charged for food, only to be told the kids were probably just buying for friends and lying about it. Can you imagine getting grounded because your parents insisted on hiring a klepto Pierre White to hand-make your lunch sushi?

Bodnarchuk was arrested in 1999 and charged with multiple counts of theft and securities fraud. The Earthquake did not play a second season. Curling lives on, and Americans continue to pay attention to it about once every four years.

Related: 6 True Crime Stories That Are Too Stupid Even For Hollywood

The people of Montrose were initially supportive, because nobody likes to immediately shut down the guy suggesting the pebbles in their garden might be worth a fortune. A local news channel even did a report on Curry's breakthroughs. In reality, he probably never found a single real meteorite while gleefully scooping up armfuls of random gravel. Actual dealers filed police complaints to stop him selling his "meteorites," and also got him kicked off eBay, where he had common and worthless rocks listed for millions of dollars. Only the diamond industry is allowed to pull that kind of scam.

As people tried to come between him and his beloved "meteorites," Curry became increasingly unhinged, challenging real experts to "duels" wherein they would simultaneously point X-ray spectrometer guns at one of his meteorites and then submit the results to a jury of their peers. When this failed to get results, Curry became threatening, prompting prominent meteorite dealers to start carrying actual guns in case he tried for a more historically accurate "duel."

Finding himself under police investigation, Curry held a meeting in Montrose, seeking volunteers for a "grand jury" to seize control of the county and place unjust local officials under arrest for treason. He was eventually arrested following an armed standoff which turned into a lengthy wrestling match with multiple cops. What a fall from space grace.

Related: 5 True Crime Stories That Sound Like The Worst Movie Ever

The weapon itself was actually the brainchild of one J.C. Wingard, a prominent spirit medium who claimed to have invented a "Nameless Force" capable of obliterating enemy warships from up to five miles away. The psychic hired McClintock to demonstrate his suspiciously untitled discovery, which he presumably stole from the ghost of Isaac Newton. Wingard's other henchman was George Holgate, a notorious freelance bomb-maker for 19th-century terrorists. You can see where this is going.

The trio demonstrated the death ray in New Orleans in 1876, when Wingard fired the device at an old schooner moored two miles away. It promptly blew sky-high. Unfortunately, a gang of newspaper boys who were hanging around an abandoned amusement park spotted a wire running to the ship. They contacted the authorities, who determined that the ship had been rigged to blow by McClintock and Holgate. Foiled by the newsies, the trio skedaddled to Boston, where they planned a second demonstration. Shortly before the test, however, McClintock was rowing toward the hulk with a 35-pound torpedo mine (guess why!) when it blew. Only splinters were left of him. Holgate and Wingard promptly fled town.

But there's another twist. Ten years later, a man claiming to be James McClintock walked into the British embassy in New York, claiming that New York's famous Irish Republican "Dynamite School" had hired him to build miniature torpedoes to sink British ships. The British promptly hired him as a double agent, but McClintock turned out to be scamming both the British and Irish. After some British spies sent his sample torpedoes to the lab in London and found them completely fake, the dude skipped town. So did McClintock survive, or was it Holgate impersonating his dead friend? Nobody knows, since everyone who investigates gets mysteriously blown up by an unexplained death ray.

For more, check out 9 Murders To Keep You Up At Night With My Favorite Murder - The Cracked Podcast:

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