Some thieves got a taste of their own “money” when they passed counterfeit bills at a Cincinnati area Wal-Mart store.

In a bizarre twist that involved two transactions and three different trips to the Wal-Mart Store in Westwood, employees were determined to teach them a lesson.

The employees are calling the thieves the dumbest criminals in the Tri-state area.

They say they used their counterfeit money to buy items, but later returned those items to get a cash refund of legitimate bills.

But the store manager had a different idea.

“A male came into the store, purchased approximately $400 worth of merchandise –a DVD player, some DVDs,” said Lieutenant Russ Neville, a Cincinnati police officer.

Wal-Mart-mart management says that after the man left, an employee noticed the money was fake — but it was too late.

They never expected what happened next.

“A female came back a short time later with a receipt from that purchase and returned approximately $300 worth of the merchandise,” said Lt. Neville.

Employees say she was hoping to get real money with her return, but Wal-Mart says they recognized the receipt and made the decision to give back the bogus bills.

Management says the thieves actually had the gall to come back a third time, less than an hour later to complain that they had been given counterfeit money.

The manager told them they could take their concerns to the police, and they left.

“I think that shows that Wal-Mart is so smart if they picked up on that,” said Neville.

On the other hand, they could go spend the counterfeit money at another business establishment.

And that’s something police say they’re looking into — why the store gave the money back, knowing it could end up in circulation again.

But the Wal-Mart store’s management says they used a counterfeit detecting pen that left obvious black marks all over the bills, that most cashiers would pick up on.

The Wal-Mart corporation had no comment about why the bills were returned.

In the meantime police say they have no suspects at this time and plan to request surveillance video from Wal-Mart to help them with their investigation.

A shocked FNB customer in Cape Town, South Africa described her disbelief at seeing three people, believed to be loan sharks, pushing a corpse in a wheelchair into the North End branch “to make a pension withdrawal”.

Officials at Mount Road police mortuary on Monday identified the dead man as Thozamile Patrick Apolis, 40, of Magi Street, Zwide.

Mimi Maku, who witnessed the event on Friday, said two men and a woman arrived at the bank in a bakkie.

“Immediately the trio forced the body of Apolis into a wheelchair and proceeded straight to the teller.”

“When the teller requested that Apolis sign, the woman said he was sick and she was his next of kin.”

Maku said the teller insisted that they wake Apolis, so another bank client tried to check his pulse.

Earlier the trio had apparently taken Apolis to Home Affairs to get an identity document so that he could “withdraw his pension money”.

FNB Provincial executive in the Eastern Cape, Gareth Davies, said one of the men, a Mr Manyonya, allegedly introduced himself to bank officials as Apolis’s cousin.

“FNB staff immediately contacted Netcare 911 when there was no response from the man,” Davies said.

Police spokesperson Thembi Gwe said they would investigate if complaints were laid by FNB or Apolis’s relatives.”

A 28-year-old Ashtabula, Ohio man is behind bars today after mistakenly running up to two police officers with a marijuana joint in one hand and a box of illegal drugs in the other, said Sgt. James Oatman of the Ashtabula Police Department.

While on patrol on Wednesday night along Station Avenue, Ashtabula Police Officers George Cleveland and Adam Simons saw a group of people disappear into the shadows as their cruisers approached the area, Oatman said.

So the officers decided to park their cruisers and begin a foot patrol of the area, Oatman said.

Near West 40th Street, a man — later identified as Marquette D. Rogers of Ashtabula — yelled to the officers and asked who they were as he ran up behind them. When the officers turned around, Rogers saw they were police officers and the officers recognized the man as one of the people who hid from them moments earlier.

Rogers was holding a marijuana joint in one hand, and a box found to contain plastic baggies, three with suspected crack cocaine, and 14 individually wrapped baggies of marijuana, Oatman said.

The 28-year-old was arrested and charged with two felonies: trafficking in marijuana within 1,000 feet of a school and possession of more than one gram of cocaine, court records show.

Officers transported Rogers to the Ashtabula City Jail, where he remained Thursday afternoon after his arraignment in Judge Albert Camplese’s courtroom. Rogers entered no plea and Camplese set bail at $5,000 or 10 percent, court officials said.

Story courtesy Shelley Terry and Ashtabula Star Beacon

I was working the midnight to 8 AM shift at a convenience store in Carroll County, MD. A local man I had known for a few years came in with a revolver and held me up at gunpoint, demanding the money from the register. After I gave it to him he locked me in the bathroom by putting a chair up against the door. When I got out I called the police and told them I was robbed and gave them the robber’s name. As I was talking to the police on the phone, I noticed the robber’s car at the pizza restaurant across the street. I told them where he was, and they showed up a few minutes later and arrested him just as he was leaving with his pizza.

If you’re going to steal copper cable, make sure it doesn’t have 12,000 volts of electricity running through it. A Hawaii man was badly burned while trying to steal a copper cable from a Maui Electric Co. distribution system.

The man was hospitalized with third-degree burns to his upper body following the attempted theft Tuesday night, authorities said.

The suspect, who knocked out power to 1,600 homes and business in West Maui for about an hour, crawled to a service station after he was shocked, Maui police said.

“When an officer arrived at the station, he noticed the man was severely burned. He could smell burned skin and hair, and noticed the man’s upper torso was burned and his hair was singed,” Capt. Charles Hirata said.

He allegedly crawled through a tunnel to an underground junction box where he attempted to cut through a a 12,000-volt distribution line, MECO manager Mike Ribao said.

The suspect got through the outer layer of insulation when he was shocked.

“The guy started to cut through the cable, but he didn’t get through,” Ribao said. “All he did was break through the outer jacket. That’s all it took.

“He can count his blessings that he’s still alive.”

A bank clerk in Zabreb, Croatia didn’t need a weapon to ward off a would-be robber. When the masked man pulled out a gun, she just laughed in his face.

The suspect was so humiliated he ran away.

The bungled holdup occurred Thursday at a small bank on Zagreb’s main square, police said.

The 31-year-old clerk, identified only as Martina S., “laughed aloud” at the threat from the bandit because she knew she was protected by a bulletproof glass, said Gordana Vulama, a police spokeswoman.

After cackling at the thief, she coolly picked up the phone to call police, Vulama said.

The failed robber spun around and fled the scene, police said. Police are searching for the suspect, Vulama said.

The security videotape shows it all - two masked men breaking into a store and loading a cash machine onto a truck. Then they made a fateful mistake: Taking off their masks and looking directly at the camera.

Video images from the heist at Dollar Update were released by the Snohomish County, Washington Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday, eight days after the robbery. There was no immediate explanation for the delay, and no arrests were immediately reported.

Jan Jorgensen, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said the store owner called 911 about 2:20 a.m. on Oct. 4 after an alarm company monitoring his business reported a break-in.

The glass front door was found broken, and tape retrieved from motion-sensitive video cameras showed a small, white pickup backing up to the front door and the driver getting out. He and another man broke the door, pushed the automatic teller machine outside and loaded it onto the truck.

Before leaving, both uncovered their faces and looked at one of the cameras, Jorgensen said.