Jim Avery
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If you're in a relationship and make a mistake, you generally have two choices. You can either A) suck it up and have an honest talk with your significant other or B) do something utterly batshit, like fake your own death to avoid admitting that you left the toilet seat up.
Guess which decision the following four guys went with?
Last November, Lee Richardson's ex-girlfriend started receiving threatening phone calls from a group of men who told her that they had kidnapped Richardson. They were going to kill him unless she paid them ransom money at regular intervals, so the frightened woman acquiesced and wound up leaving the kidnappers thousands of dollars in a mailbox between November and July.
But when she stopped making payments, the kidnappers stole her car to show her that they meant business, as they were curiously hellbent on receiving ransom payments from her instead of Richardson's other friends or immediate family.
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"And whatever you do, don't ever go to his apartment, because he's totally super not there."
The police finally pulled over the stolen vehicle on the highway last month. Lo and behold, the driver was Richardson, who had staged the entire thing to get revenge on his ex-girlfriend. Richardson hadn't counted on the police becoming involved, because apparently his end game was to stay kidnapped forever.
Neil McArdle woke up on the morning of his wedding to discover that he hadn't correctly filled out the forms to book Liverpool's historic St. George's Hall for his nuptials. Yes, McArdle and his bride-to-be didn't actually have anyplace to get married, unless they wanted to try to do the service in the parking lot really quick before anyone noticed.
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"I'm telling you, it's the new wedding trend. I saw it on the Huffington Post."
Rather than face the woman with whom he was ready to spend the rest of his life and fess up, McArdle decided to call in a bomb threat to St. George's Hall and have the building evacuated. He'd hoped the threat would buy him some time (although what he intended to do with that extra time is never made clear), and he allowed both his bride and the entire wedding party to show up at the venue and find it crawling with cops. However, the fake bomb failed to vaporize St. George's booking records, which still displayed a dramatic lack of anything resembling McArdle's wedding reservation. So not only did the hoax earn him criminal charges, but it was also utterly pointless.
Ravi Kumar of Bangalore, India, was facing a difficult situation -- not only was his wife, Saroja, divorcing him, but she was demanding 1.5 million rupees (about $24,000) in alimony payments. Rather than discuss things with Saroja or through a mediator, Kumar went to the police and told them four men had just burst into his house and robbed him. He cunningly reasoned that no court would hold him responsible for an expensive alimony payment if he had just been robbed, because the thieves had clearly stolen all of the money he was ever going to earn and Kumar was unaware of gradual payment plans.
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"... and then they said they'd used a time machine to rob future me too, and that future Saroja totally gets fat."
His brilliant scheme only fell apart when the police actually went to investigate. They inspected his house to find it looking thoroughly unrobbed (none of his mother's jewelry had been stolen, for example, even though she was at home at the time of the alleged robbery), and none of his neighbors or the many people in the crowded surrounding streets had noticed any suspicious activity. Kumar confessed, presumably after debating whether to blame the crime on thieving poltergeists with extremely discerning tastes.
Rogelio Andaverde decided he wanted to go hang out with his friends, but rather than tell his wife, Maria, that he was going out, he had two of his buddies put on masks, explode through his front door, and drag him off into the night. That's, like, way easier.
Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office
"Name one time communication helped a relationship."
His terrified wife immediately called the police, who spent all night searching for Andaverde with a fucking helicopter, to no avail. Then, two days later, Andaverde just strolled right on home and claimed that the kidnappers had benevolently released him (after violently abducting him at gunpoint from his home in the middle of the night).
Nobody bought his obvious bullshit story, and Andaverde was charged with a misdemeanor, although the sheriff speculated that the punishment Andaverde's wife will inflict on him after keeping her gripped in mortal terror for days so he could go out and drink will probably be much worse.
