Episode 5 Bizarre Crime

Britain's bobbies see some bizarre things in the line of duty.

I think they'll think twice about stealing an owl in future.

And for this series, with the help of victims, cops and crooks,

we've unearthed the UK's most audacious...

-Go faster.

-..deviant...

The guy's completely naked in the chimney.

..and downright daft acts of criminality.

Stealing from a CCTV shop - it's not ironic, it's moronic.

These odd offences all prove one thing - crime doesn't pay.

And the police won't rest until they get their man.

We had him banged to rights.

So observe your right to remain silent

as we sentence you to 30 minutes of guilty pleasure

in the weird world of Bizarre Crime.

# Crime don't pay Crime don't pay

-# X and Y were the best of friends

-Of friends

# They stuck together round the awkward bends

-# Since the killing Y tries to find

-To find

# A way to pay the guilty back in time

# Crime don't pay Crime don't pay. #

Coming up - police unmask the master of dodgy disguises behind a devious driving-test scam.

He would be paid about £3,000 a time to take, in some cases,

both the theory and the practical test.

And one couple are tormented by a neighbour's breathtakingly bizarre campaign of harassment.

He used to stand behind the hedge, when it was absolutely teeming it down with rain, whistling.

WHISTLING

But our first explosive case involves a round trip across the Pennines,

carried out by a doting dad who'd hatched a barmy plot

to outwit a speed camera.

You'd think it'd been hit by a rocket launcher. It was a real mess.

Doncaster-based railway welder Craig Moore's criminal caper began one day in August 2006

when he was flashed by a speed camera on his way to work.

Went to work, did my shift, it were playing on my mind.

Craig wasn't just worried about getting a fine.

With ten penalty points already on his licence,

getting more would mean a driving ban, which spelt big trouble.

If I lost my licence, I lost my job. It would have a knock-on effect.

The main thing that worried me - I had a mortgage, same as anyone else.

No job meant no income,

and no income meant not being able to support his family.

I've got two kids, a missus. How do I support 'em, what do I do?

That one little flash was turning into a bit of a nightmare.

So that evening Craig wracked his brains

for a way to get out of his speeding camera quandary,

before having what must rank

as one of the world's oddest and daftest eureka moments.

The solution I come up with was to try and destroy the camera.

To ensure he could keep putting food on the table,

Craig was about to go from family man to feckless felon. But how?

It's hardly like he could lay his hands on stuff powerful enough to annihilate a speed camera.

Well, actually he could.

I planned to destroy the camera by burning it with the stuff I used at work.

At work, welder Craig used a compound called thermite to fuse railway tracks together.

It's hot enough to melt steel in seconds.

Craig had eight tubs of it in the back of his van.

And the desperate dad was about to use it to destroy the camera.

The van loaded with combustible compound,

Craig drove 40 miles across the Pennines to wreck the camera before it wrecked his life.

I parked the van at the side of the camera, climbed on the roof.

Once on top of the van,

Craig placed the thermite on top of the camera and lit the fuse.

As quick as a speed camera flash, the blaze took hold

and as the metal menace became a molten puddle, Craig pulled away,

convinced his troubles were over.

Mission accomplished, really.

In fact, Craig's troubles were only just beginning.

Enter Police Constable Mark Akers.

It was his job to investigate the peculiar pyrotechnics.

It was completely destroyed,

huge holes burned in it. There was absolutely nothing left inside it.

I thought, "That's been hit with a rocket launcher." It was a real mess.

It seemed like Craig had done a decent job of decimating the camera and its contents,

but in an unfortunate twist for this criminal bright spark,

it turned out the footage stored inside had escaped completely unharmed.

The actual recordings of cars going past is based in the ground,

it's not the actual camera.

The camera's pictures were perfectly preserved

and they made for interesting viewing.

The camera had been activated

and it clearly showed the offender's vehicle stop underneath the camera.

It clearly showed the name of the company and the registration of the vehicle.

The vehicle then begins to rock slowly.

I would think somebody's either got out or got onto the roof

and as the vehicle pulled away, you see a few sparks

and then all of a sudden...

Bang! And you just get a white screen.

Armed with the van's registration and the company logo,

police simply traced it back to Craig's work, who confirmed he'd signed it out that night.

Worse still, because all the vans had GPS trackers,

our feckless firestarter had also provided police with a record of his entire journey.

From that information, then, I arrested the suspect.

In a last-ditch attempt to save himself and his job,

Craig denied the offence.

I was denying it cos I fully intended to go not guilty.

Not quite catching on to the fact that the evidence was stacked firmly against him,

Craig thought police wouldn't be able to prove he was at the scene.

They didn't have any evidence that I was the person driving that van.

You know, that's the facts. They are laid before you.

"That's all the information we have, it can't be anybody else."

"Well, I don't know." That was it, "I don't know."

All I said is I went to bed.

But what luckless Craig didn't realise was that his small but serious act of fiery vandalism

could land him in big trouble.

The misguided moment of madness designed to help him keep his job

easily fell under explosives and terrorism laws,

which carry heavy sentences and in the worst cases can lead to life imprisonment.

He was just a working-class lad who didn't really understand or comprehend

the severity of what he'd got involved with.

Deciding he didn't much fancy spending a long stretch behind bars,

Craig confessed to the lesser charge of criminal damage.

They scared me enough to make me crumble and I went guilty.

Craig had caused nearly £12,000 worth of damage

and he was sentenced to four months in jail.

In Strangeways.

As if that wasn't punishment enough,

there was one final kick in the teeth for Craig.

The camera itself was more of a traffic monitoring system

rather than for prosecuting people. He wouldn't have received any fine,

or anything whatsoever from that camera,

so all the devious things he did and the trouble he got in,

it was for nothing, for absolutely nothing.

I took drastic measures...

made a mountain out of a molehill.

Having paid his debt to society,

Craig's back home and on the straight and narrow.

It's not something I'm proud of or 'owt like that.

I did apologise to the people who that camera served.

Like, obviously it stole money out of their pot, do you know what I mean?

I should have never set off in the van.

Really I should have just gone home.

Next time Craig gets a strange spark of genius,

here's hoping he snuffs it out sharpish.

In Bizarre Crime, we're treating you to the most calamitous criminal acts

caught on camera. Here's one crook not having much luck

breaking into a Texas liquor store.

Nice commando roll.

Having wormed his way in through the roof,

the criminal mastermind is ready to make one hell of an entrance.

Looks like he forgot to commando roll that time.

Having landed on his head, and therefore not injured a vital organ,

he's soon up and ready for a bit of late-night looting.

Although this clueless crim has sadly not given much thought as to how he'll make off with his swag.

Unable to crank open the door,

he tries to exit exactly the way he came in and kind of succeeds...

..by ending up flat on his back again.

Resigned to the fact he's going nowhere fast,

the crook eventually kicks back and enjoys a fag break

to go over his last few minutes of freedom.

Next tonight is the astonishing and bizarre case of four-wheeled felony that spanned the country

and involved a master of makeshift disguises who made an absolute mint.

It's very possible that he took up to 200 tests in total.

There was £52,000 spread around the house in envelopes,

laying in drawers.

For most of us, a driving test is a daunting prospect.

Bit nerve-wracking to see someone next to you writing notes down.

It's completely scary.

So what do you do if you're horrified by hill starts

and a three-point turn makes your stomach churn?

Like these two law-abiding learner drivers,

you're likely to either hope for the best or prepare for the worst.

What you're unlikely to do is pay someone to don a daft disguise,

pretend to be you and sit the test in your place.

But incredibly that's exactly the scam

illegal immigrant Gagan Preet Singh was running in 2010.

He'd advertise his services, mainly amongst the Indian community,

saying he was available to take tests for people

that perhaps felt they couldn't take the test

or shouldn't be taking the test.

So he'd be paid a fee and he would take the test on their behalf.

You might wonder how one man could sit more than one test.

Singh was crafty enough to target his customers well.

He would choose people that weren't too dissimilar to himself.

Singh knew he would have to alter his appearance at each new test

to avoid arousing suspicion. So what did he deploy?

Cunningly applied stage make-up? State-of-the-art prosthetics?

One day it would be a scarf, another day he'd put a turban on,

another day he'd wear a beanie hat or a flat cap.

Sorry?

One day it would be a scarf, another day he'd put a turban on,

another day he'd wear a beanie hat or a flat cap.

Well, it's hardly Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible,

but by using this bizarre and staggeringly simple set of disguises

and by hitting a host of different examiners in different locations,

Singh was able to outwit test centres across the country.

We've got suspicious incidents and tests we believe he'd taken

-in Bristol.

-Birmingham.

-Oxford.

-Worthing.

-Southampton.

-Hayes, I believe, in Middlesex.

In one particular case, he took one test in the morning in West London,

and then another test in the afternoon in Southampton.

Wherever he was, his services didn't come cheap.

We think up to about £3,000 a time to take, in some cases,

both the theory and the practical test.

Certainly not money well spent, because if you were to take

driving lessons from scratch - you've never driven before -

you should be able to get through your driving test

with that sort of money and then be a pretty good driver at the end of it.

And, unbelievably, even after they'd handed over their cash,

customers weren't guaranteed to get their money's worth.

He did fail tests, potentially because he was very complacent.

On one of the occasions, he actually took the test

three times before he passed it, for the same person.

The conman's skills at the wheel were as impressive as his criminal genius.

His dodgy disguises and geographical spread might have helped him evade detection

but there was one crucial part of his master plan he'd overlooked.

He would turn up for the tests in the same car.

I think he even took a test in Birmingham

then travelled down to Southampton on the same day using the same car.

That starts to raise suspicion.

With the same Mini Cooper pulling up at test centres across the country,

the Driving Standards Agency,

who oversee driving instruction in the UK, became suspicious.

A police investigation soon kicked in,

and following the paper trail connected to his car registration,

cops were soon able to track Singh down and raid his house.

We were able to find him,

a number of disguises and a large quantity of cash.

There was £52,000 spread around the house in envelopes,

laying in drawers, things like that.

But the bundles of bank notes were just a small portion

of the fortune Singh had raked in.

It's very possible that he took up to 200 tests in total.

Police suspect Singh could have scammed a staggering half a million pounds,

but, of course, money wasn't the only driving force behind this crime.

In a similar case, the driving licences were being used

as a basis for people taking the citizenship test.

So it can open a number of doors.

But providing dodgy IDs wasn't the most disturbing consequence of Singh's swindle.

In many cases, the people who were paying Gagan Preet Singh

probably couldn't speak English or read English,

so the inherent dangers on the roads are pretty obvious, I think.

A car can be a lethal weapon, can't it?

You get hit by a car, it's just as bad as being hit by a bullet.

In court, Singh pleaded guilty to nine counts of fraud by false representation,

as well as six counts of driving while disqualified,

as, astonishingly, the shameless fraudster

had sat some of the tests while banned due to drink driving.

Singh was sentenced to 14 months in prison,

and his paying customers were in for a bit of a shock too.

They may have been issued with a full licence,

but they've all been revoked. They've actually now got to go through the process,

having paid for somebody else to take their test.

It will cost them the equivalent again to pass it legitimately.

Once he'd served his time Singh was deported,

and although he may no longer be in the UK, his four-wheeled partner in crime has remained in Blighty.

But this time, the police are in the driving seat.

I'm sitting on the car that was seized. It's now being used by a neighbourhood police team in Surrey.

We've put livery on it to show that actually crime doesn't pay.

Let the Mini's message and the tale of Gagan Preet Singh

serve as a warning to learner drivers everywhere.

Practise a bit harder your three-point turns and your hill starts.

By paying someone, you'll be out of pocket and probably end up being arrested at a later stage.

If your mind was boggled by Mr Singh's weird face furniture,

brace yourself for this week's Criminal Countdown,

which presents some of the oddest and daftest disguises donned by criminals around the world.

First up is the man who disguised himself as a tree

to rob a bank in New Hampshire in 2007.

Improbably, the branch was located on Elm Street

and the pithy police admitted that the crook had...

Gone out on a limb.

The barking raider was caught after being grassed up by someone who recognised him on CCTV.

Odder still is Ohio's moss man

who claimed he was test-driving his Halloween outfit

when found in the grounds of a rock and mineral museum in 2010.

Given that it was two weeks before fright night

and he was face down in the dirt at five in the morning,

police didn't quite buy it. In fact,

he'd been lying in wait after digging a tunnel into the museum

hoping to get his hands on the precious gold nuggets within.

MOOING

And if you're not a plant lover, how about an animal disguise?

One crim in Virginia climbed into a cow suit

before crawling into a supermarket and stealing 96 gallons of milk,

which he then handed out to shoppers in the car park.

MUSIC: "The Imperial March" by John Williams

More menacing was the robber who turned to the dark side in 2010

when he held up a Long Island bank disguised as Darth Vader.

Staff initially thought it was a prank,

but when he pulled out a handgun rather than a light sabre,

they soon realised this phantom menace meant business.

Not so cunning was the crook who held up a store near Scarborough

-using his crash helmet as a disguise.

-This is a stick-up.

What he'd forgotten was the helmet

had his name written across the front in inch-high letters.

But if you haven't got a helmet to hand,

why not just use duct tape? Like this witless raider

who tried to rob a liquor store in Kentucky in 2007.

But top of this week's countdown for sheer stupidity as much as strangeness

are the daft duo who were pulled over by police in Iowa

while making their escape from an attempted burglary in 2009.

They decided the best way to disguise themselves

would be to cover their faces in permanent marker.

The pen might be mightier than the sword

but it's certainly no replacement for a good balaclava.

For Bizarre Crime, we've turned the spotlight on the cops,

asking serving and retired officers from across the country

to recount the funniest and freakiest things they've encountered.

What you're about to hear might sound far-fetched,

but it's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

THEY CLEAR THEIR THROAT

Welcome to Bizarre Crime's Police Confessional.

Exhibit J - the A12.

I was on traffic patrol on the A12 in Chelmsford and we got a call

to say there was a vehicle travelling in the nearside lane

at a very low speed which was causing a problem.

I found the car, I got behind it. It was travelling about 10mph.

Eventually I stopped it, got out, and there was a little grey-haired old lady driving.

I said, "Excuse me, is there a problem with your car?"

She said, "No, it's fine. "I don't drive it very often."

I said, "Well, why are you travelling at 10mph?"

She said, "I'm trying to keep within the speed limit." I said, "The speed limit is 70mph."

"No, it's not," she said, "Look, it's 12mph."

I said, "No, madam, that is the A12 not the speed limit."

For our final story, we're heading to Derbyshire.

Not only a county of rolling hills and quiet suburbs,

but also the scene of a creepy campaign of harassment that truly beggars belief.

He monitored our movements from seven in the morning until 11 at night.

This happened every day of our lives. It never, ever stopped.

MUSIC: Theme song from "Neighbours"

Wingerworth near Chesterfield is a suburban bungalow haven

where good neighbours can become good friends.

-This area is tremendous.

-Very friendly, very neighbourly.

Honest, law-abiding, and great neighbours.

It was neighbourliness that first attracted Michael and Kathleen Sharpe to the area.

Everybody's there for everybody else.

You know, if they want any help, then we'll be there for 'em.

It was a lovely place to live.

What they could never had anticipated, however,

was that across the road lived a neighbour who would become a nightmare,

all because of one very innocent, very ordinary request.

We just asked him, quite politely,

one day, if he could move the car a little bit further forward

so we could get the car out. Basically, that's how it all started.

Bizarrely, the neighbour became incensed,

and from that day on, he made it his mission to make the Sharpes' lives miserable.

He began by making false allegations to the local authorities.

The first one was environmental health

and he reported us for making a noise.

So they came and investigated that

and discovered of course that it wasn't true.

The neighbour made up countless complaints and contacted the planning department, the taxman,

and even told estate agents to put the Sharpes' house up for sale.

He accused me of pointing a gun at him one day,

and the police came and arrested me. There were no charges because they knew it was a fabrication,

-but it was very traumatic.

-Of course, when he couldn't do anything else,

then he started intimidating and harassing us every day.

And the form this harassment took was breathtakingly bizarre,

not least because their neighbour waged this weird war

while hidden behind his hedge.

He used to stand behind the hedge,

when it was absolutely teeming it down with rain, whistling.

WHISTLING

Every time we left our home,

he was coughing...

whistling...laughing.

MANIACAL LAUGHING

The laughing used to upset me the most

because it was a sinister, manic laugh.

Despite attempts to reason with their neighbour,

the relentless round-the-clock campaign continued,

and the Sharpes felt they had no choice but to call in the police.

It's remarkable to note that this man actually stood behind his large beech hedge

for up to 17 hours a day waiting for them,

and then he would constantly whistle. WHISTLING

The Addams Family was one theme tune that the neighbour would whistle on occasions

or the Laurel and Hardy theme tune.

Mrs Sharpe's daughter had appeared on the Weakest Link

so he was shouting, "You are the Weakest Link."

Running up and down the back of the hedge as people walked past shouting,

"Good morning, good morning," when it was pitch dark and scaring Mrs Sharpe.

This is a terrible, terrible thing.

He just about wore us down.

To help build a case against the Wingerworth Whistler,

Kathleen kept a diary of his bizarre and obsessive behaviour.

"Wednesday April 16th -

"he was coughing and whistling at the back of the hedge."

It's very difficult, I expect,

for people to understand that just somebody whistling and coughing can cause so much upset.

But this happened every day of our lives. It never, ever stopped.

"Three o'clock - gentleman again at the back of the hedge whistling."

When people are regularly and intentionally harassed,

they develop what you call hypervigilance -

you expect it, you're hypersensitive to it and every time it comes, it needles you more and more.

"Thursday 24th April -

"he was stood in front of the lounge window coughing."

It can be likened a little bit to post traumatic stress disorder, actually.

Somebody gets mugged in the street. They hear somebody running up afterwards -

they'll respond with an anxiety not normal to the situation

because they've experienced something traumatic before.

"3.25 - he was at the back of the hedge

"whistling and laughing that very manic laugh."

Because the Sharpes' neighbour was also making claims against them,

it was difficult for the police or the authorities to know who was in the wrong

and who to take action against.

But Sergeant Rawlinson was determined to crack the case

and suggested the couple install CCTV cameras.

The man saw the cameras going in,

but he still kept doing what he was doing.

Over the coming months, every cough, cackle,

and crazed act was caught on CCTV.

WHISTLING

MANIACAL LAUGH

WHISTLING

MANIACAL LAUGH

WHISTLING

The Sharpes amassed hours of video evidence

and the police finally had enough to act.

The neighbour was arrested for harassment, interviewed and charged.

The obnoxious neighbour was issued with an ASBO which banned him

from any further acts of harassment against the Sharpes.

It didn't stop him at all.

As soon as he came home, he started again.

Over the next few days, the Whistler breached the ASBO

a staggering 21 times, but each new offence was caught on CCTV.

He was again arrested for breach of the antisocial behaviour order,

and he was given 16 weeks in prison.

With the weird whistler banged up,

the Sharpes could finally get life back to normal.

I felt elated.

I think we all had the best Christmas we'd ever had for five years.

We decorated the house and all the front and everything. It was great.

When he was released, the nightmare neighbour sold up and moved on.

After five years of torment, the Sharpes' house no longer felt like a prison but a home.

Life was terrible, absolutely terrible.

And now everything is great. We're back to normal.

Next time on Bizarre Crime - a bungling bin burglar gets trashed.

We sort of checked the camera twice.

Because you want to make sure that what you're seeing is right.

One victim uses odd and ingenious methods to track down a phone thief.

It did feel like that's what it could be like to be a secret agent.

And the weird criminal conspiracy behind the disappearance of a national treasure.

The moment I opened it to about there,

it was clear that this was an Enigma machine.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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