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The idiotic Google search that got 3 wannabe bank-robbers arrested

Police found a series of Internet searches that would turn any innocent individual's hands red.

 

Chase Hoffberger

Internet Culture

Posted on Oct 16, 2013   Updated on Jun 1, 2021, 4:07 am CDT

Three blockheads with very little understanding of modern technology—or the trace you leave when you use the Internet on a home computer—were arrested Friday for robbing a bank in Weymouth, Mass., a tiny hamlet outside of Boston. 

We call them blockheads because, when police identified the three—Sarah McLoud, 27; her boyfriend, Robert Owens, 28; and Daniel Murphy, 30—as suspects and searched their homes, they found that the three culprits had done little to erase any evidence that they were plotting to rob a bank. 


 

Namely, police found on McLoud’s computer a series of Internet searches that would turn any innocent individual’s hands red: “What happens if you rob a bank,” “What happens if you rob a house,” “What happens if you rob a drug dealer,” and “If you’re going to rob a bank.”

In this case, the answer to “What happens if you rob a bank” is “Police will arrest you, charge you with unarmed robbery, conspiracy to commit unarmed robbery, possession with intent to distribute heroin”—McLoud held “a significant quantity of heroin packaged for sale” in her home—”and possession with intent to distribute Xanax, before tagging you with a $10,000 cash bail.”

The three will be arraigned in a Quincy, Mass., court on Tuesday, though they face steep odds of an acquittal. 

Perhaps they should run a search on how to pull the wool over a district court judge’s eyes.

HT Gawker | Photo via foilman/Flickr

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*First Published: Oct 16, 2013, 10:59 am CDT