Robber uses Craigslist and an Inner Tube to Fool Police

Black Donut by Heaven‘s Gate (John)

In an elab­o­rate rob­bery scheme that’s one part The Thomas Crowne Affair and one part Pineap­ple Express, a crook robbed an armored truck out­side a Bank of Amer­ica branch in Mon­roe, Wash., by hir­ing decoys through Craigslist to deter authorities.

It gets bet­ter: He then escaped in a creek headed for the Skykomish River in an inner tube, and the cops are still look­ing for him. “A great amount of money” was taken, Mon­roe police said, but did not pro­vide a dol­lar value.

It appears to have unfolded this way, accord­ing to a Seattle-based NBC affil­i­ate: around 11:00 a.m. PDT on Tues­day, the rob­ber, wear­ing a yel­low vest, safety gog­gles, a blue shirt, and a res­pi­ra­tor mask went over to a guard who was over­see­ing the unload­ing of cash to the bank from the truck. He sprayed the guard with pep­per spray, grabbed his bag of money, and fled the scene.

But here’s the hilar­i­ous twist. The rob­ber had pre­vi­ously put out a Craigslist ad for road main­te­nance work­ers, promis­ing wages of $28.50 per hour. Recruits were asked to wait near the Bank of Amer­ica right around the time of the rob­bery – wear­ing yel­low vests, safety gog­gles, a res­pi­ra­tor mask, and prefer­ably a blue shirt. At least a dozen of them showed up after respond­ing to the Craigslist ad.

“I came across the ad that was for a pre­vail­ing wage job for $28.50 an hour,” one of the unwit­ting decoys, named Mike, said to the NBC sta­tion. As it turns out, they were sim­ply placed there to con­fuse cops who were look­ing for a guy wear­ing a vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal outfit.

Author­i­ties even­tu­ally found the get­away inner tube (a get­away inner tube!) and sus­pect that accom­plices may have picked up the rob­ber in a boat. Accord­ing to the NBC affil­i­ate, police hope to track him down by fig­ur­ing out who posted the Craigslist ad in the first place.

Craigslist founder Craig New­mark was not imme­di­ately avail­able for comment.