If you watch as many Netflix crime documentaries as I do, you'll know that there have been some pretty smart criminals in the past. I'm not endorsing or condoning them in any way, but some individuals just seem to have a talent for pulling off complex cons or elaborate fraud schemes, and it's almost impressive at times. However, on the other end of the spectrum, you've got the sort of bumbling felons that end up ridiculing themselves in the process of trying to make a quick buck. Think Harry and Marv - otherwise known as the Wet Bandits - from Home Alone, or literally any bad guy from Scooby Doo. Far from being works of fiction, though, these types of clueless criminals exist among us. And, boy, is it funny when they get caught. Earlier this week, the police department in Copenhagen, Denmark, got an early Christmas present when a drug dealer accidentally handed himself over to them. The man, who has not been named, was in a rush to get home, and jumped into what he believed to be a taxi. Unfortunately for him, the vehicle was a police car. Not only that - but it was occupied by officers who were in the Christiania area in order to enforce a crackdown on drug use. Caught 0ff-guard, the officers decided to search the man, and found that he was in possession of approximately 1,000 cannabis joints. The area has been under strict surveillance over the past few months, as drug dealing rates are at a dangerous high. It's not exactly surprising, then, that someone with that quantity of joints happened to be in close proximity to the cops. What is shocking, however, was his complete lack of thought as he jumped into the back of their car. Understandably, the whole department was astounded - firstly, at the man's stupidity, and, secondly, at their amazing luck. "Last night a cannabis dealer from Christiania who wanted to get home quickly got into a taxi. He received a big surprise when he realised it was actually a police car he was sitting in," the police wrote on the Copenhagen Twitter account. "The police officers were happy to see him," they added, "since he was carrying around 1,000 joints." Police Chief Jesper Bangsgaar, a member of the Copenhagen department, said in a separate statement that the man couldn't really make any excuse, as he'd been caught red-handed. Or green-handed, I guess, depending on where exactly he'd been hiding the spliffs. Like many areas of Europe, marijuana is illegal in Denmark. Now, as a result of his foolish mistake, the drug dealer faces up to eight years behind bars. His sentence may seem harsh, given that the drug is permitted in some other nations around the world, but perhaps he should have thought twice before practically gift-wrapping himself for the police officers. If it's any consolation to him, he's not the only one to have been caught out in such an amazing way. Just this week, a police force in the UK caught nearly two dozen criminals after copying a sting operation used by Chief Wiggum in The Simpsons.

It may have seemed outlandish to some that in Breaking Bad, Gus Fring operated a drug empire from behind the doors of a family-friendly fast food restaurant - but this fiction wasn't too far from the truth.

Earlier this month, authorities in Arizona discovered $1 million in various drugs during a traffic stop, but their findings didn't end there. Soon enough, they were led to a 600-foot tunnel running all the way to a private home in Mexico - starting in a former KFC.

On August 13, police in San Luis, Arizona, saw the owner of a now-abandoned business, bringing several plastic containers outside and loading them onto a trailer. Court documents obtained by KGUN describe that they pulled him over for an unspecified equipment violation, but during the traffic stop a narcotics dog alerted them to the presence of drugs.

Inside were 239 packages of various drug substances, including over 261 pounds of methamphetamine, 14 pounds of cocaine, 30 pounds of white heroin, 13.7 pounds of brown heroin and 6.8 pounds of fentanyl. According to Homeland Security Special Agent Scott Brown, who spoke to KYMA on Wednesday about the bust, the fentanyl alone "translates to over 3 million dosage units". The total value of the drugs seized was over $1 million.

The suspect, later identified as Jesus Ivan Lopez Garcia, is currently facing federal charges including conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute. It has been reported that Garcia bought the property, which used to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, in April for $390,000. Apparently, however, "the structure was vacant in recent years and was not used for business," according to the court documents.

Two days after the initial arrest, a full search of the vacant fast food restaurant was conducted, and the entrance to the tunnel was found inside. Homeland Secruity Investigations officials confirmed to KYMA that the tunnel was 22 feet deep and travelled nearly 590 feet underground, before reaching a private home across the border. The tunnel ends in a trap door underneath a bed in the home, located in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico.

Court documents described the construction of the drug tunnel:

"This tunnel was very well constructed and would have taken this Drug Trafficking Organization a long time to dig and would have been very expensive.

"This tunnel necessarily required a combination of several individuals on both sides of the border, engaged in an intricate, risky transnational conspiracy to construct such a secretive structure."

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time that a drug trafficking tunnel has been constructed into the United States. In 2016, a tunnel nearly half a mile long was found running from San Diego to Tijuana. And in 2012, police discovered a "sophisticated drug smuggling tunnel" running from the same locations as the 2018 find.

Almost 200 cross border tunnels have been discovered since 1990, the Independent reported, although these have been of various sizes and success rates. Homeland Security even has its own tunnel task force to deal with these sorts of crimes.

When people are past retirement age, they often decide to go on vacation a lot more. Once they no longer have to worry about taking time off work, suddenly old age pensioners have far more incentive to jet off to parts unknown and sunnier climes. Maybe they want to visit the Florida Everglades, or go on a ski trip to the alps, or even play it safe with a cruise down Benidorm. Whatever they decide, you can bet that it's likely to be a hell of a lot more relaxed than the sort of holidays that youngsters go on. There'll be no promiscuous sex, beach parties, and drug taking for the over-60s.

... Or so you might have thought, until now. It turns out that at least two members of the older generarion have managed to land themselves in seriously hot water during a trip abroad, after Portuguese police arrested a British couple in their seventies (neither of whom have been named yet) after they discovered that they were carrying $2.5 million worth of cocaine in their suitcases; the ecquivilent of almost nine kilograms!

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The Portuguese police authorities have released a statement concerning the arrest, in which they wrote: "The Policia Judiciaria's National Drugs Trafficking Unit has identified and arrested a foreign couple who were travelling on a cruise line doing a circuit which took in the Caribbean and Europe. They were arrested on suspicion of international drugs trafficking."

They added: "The operation, which took place with the support of the Maritime Police, was the result of the permanent exchange of information and cooperation that exists between the PJ and the British forces of law and order, specifically the National Crime Agency."

"The arrests occurred after the ship had reached Lisbon Port's cruise terminal and after a search of the cabin the suspects were using, where four suitcases with a high amount of cocaine hidden inside was seized. The suspects, who are aged 70 and 72, were questioned as suspects or arguidos before being remanded in prison. The investigation by the PJ and UK authorities is ongoing."

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Meanwhile, Vitor Ananais, leader of the sting operation for the Policia Judiciaria, stated: "The man and the woman are English although they don't live in England but in another European country. I can't say which country at the moment because the investigation is ongoing and I don't want to compromise what we are doing."

He added: "The arrests took place on December 4. We knew who were looking for and boarded the cruise ship with a search warrant. The drugs were hidden in false bottoms in the suitcases and were distributed evenly among the four cases in the cabin. There were nine kilos seized in total."

So there you have it: turns out that two OAPs are more than capable of breaking bad, and ending up banged up abroad. I'm not sure they'll be able to afford bail on a state pension.

Some people will try anything to smuggle illicit goods across country borders.

The black market allows for the stealthy manufacturing and distribution of most illegal products under the sun. And Drug mules - those in charge of transporting these goods - have tried everything from stuffing breast implants with cocaine to loading meth inside jalapeños or cucumbers.

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Now - if you've thought of it (or even if you haven't) - someone has tried it.

Though the best smugglers can be inconspicuous, some have their giveaways or tells. Per The Standard, one man unsuccessfully attempted to transfer half a kilogram of cocaine underneath his wig, after authorities caught onto his behaviour, and his obviously irregular hairline.

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After a flight from Bogota, Colombia to Barcelona, Spain, police stopped a man walking through the Josep Tarradellas Airport. While he looked nervous, his main giveaway was his oversized hairpiece. The man had attempted to smuggle the drugs by taping them to his head, before covering them with a large toupee and hat.

Spanish authorities report that the man was trying to conceal more than $33,000 (£27,000) of cocaine across country lines. A police statement read: "There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls.”

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Though police shared a photo of the man wearing the drugs as a hat - both with and without his oversized toupee covering them - they shaded his eyes as to not reveal his identity.

Illegal drug trading is incredibly difficult to regulate. In 2018, Spanish police seized more than 100 kilograms of cocaine at the Barcelona-El Prat airport, which is about the weight of a full-grown donkey. That's a whole lot of powder.

For those of you who haven’t caught the Netflix's hit show Narcos yet, let me fill you in: it charts the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug lord whose Medellín Cartel dominated cocaine smuggling during the 1980s. Nicknamed "The King of Cocaine", and notorious for ordering thousands of murders, at the height of his reign his group was making $70 million every single day. Yes, a day. By the early 1990s, he had amassed a personal fortune thought to be upwards of $30 billion, putting him firmly within Forbes’ Top 10 Rich List. And 24 years after his death in a shootout with police, the CIA are still looking for his secret stash. So you’d imagine that being married to a man of such wealth and notoriety would be pretty cushy, right? An endless stream of money, everyone too scared to say no to your every whim and delight? Errrr, well, maybe not so much. Narcos might present Tata Escobar - real name Maria Victoria Henao as long-suffering, if calculating and devoted, but it’s time to separate the fact from the fiction. Without further ado, let's take a look at the life of Pablo Escobar's wife...  [[instagramwidget||https://www.instagram.com/p/8dwjfJL_7O/]]

When ya know, ya know

While Escobar was the son of a humble farmer and a schoolteacher, Maria actually came from a more prestigious background. She was just 13 when they met, and 15 when they married - a full 11 years younger than Escobar. As you can probably imagine, her family weren’t too thrilled about the union and tried to stop it taking place, seeing him as too common for their daughter. But Maria was unrepentant and eloped, with her son quoting her as saying: “I fell in love with his desire to help people and his compassion for their hardship. We['d] drive to places where he dreamed of building schools for the poor. From [the] beginning, he was always a gentleman.” Errrrr, okay then - maybe she wasn't quite as involved in the quest for world domination as Narcos would have you believe. 

   You get cheated on - a lot

They may have been in love, but that doesn’t mean Pablo Escobar wasn’t in lust with, well, just about anyone else. He was reported to have had numerous affairs, often with much younger women. Among those who were romanced by drug kingpin include journalist Virginia Vallejo, who had a five-year affair with Escobar and spoke of his charm, charisma, passion - and ruthlessness - in her 2007 memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar.

You spend a lot of time on the run

So you may have a stonking huge pile of cash - Escobar reportedly had a private plane solely for the purpose of transporting all his notes about - but it turns out that money doesn't necessarily buy you freedom. After Pablo’s death, she and her children fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina fearing retribution from rival drug cartels; the country granted them asylum and allowed her to change her name to Maria Isabel Santos Caballero. Prior to this, they had travelled to Mozambique and even asked the Vatican to give them a helping hand, but both refused.  

You can’t let him have all the glory

Even with the new identity, life in Argentina wasn’t to be so simple, however. In 1999, hours after a current affairs show publicly revealed their presence in the country, Maria and Juan Pablo were arrested on charges of money laundering. Not wanting to give up their life of luxury, they were thought to have amassed a fortune of $1 billion through dodgy dealings with drugs cartel, but they were released without charge. Detectives later said that they’d been watching the family for a while, but wouldn’t have swooped so soon if their identities hadn’t been revealed. Maria, on the other hand, claimed the investigation was politically motivated.

And at the end of it all, obscurity awaits

Since the whole “Argentina thing”, Maria seems to be a woman of mystery; no one seems to know exactly where she is today, which is probably a good thing considering all of the interest in her life since the release of Narcos. Given the fact that both of her children still live in Argentina, it’s thought she’s probably keeping a low-profile there, although there have also been suggestions that she's living under an alias in North Carolina, USA. She did appear in the 2009 documentary Sins of My Father, which saw Juan Pablo seeking redemption from those affected by his father’s actions.  [[youtubewidget||https://www.youtube.com/watch]] They say that behind every great man is a great woman, but given that they're still living under pseudonyms well over 20 years after this death,  it's clear that Escobar's family paid a huge price for his criminal lifestyle. More than anything, however, Maria's life story tells us that life as a gangster's wife is a world away from the glamorous luxury of the movies. It's less throwing dollars around, more running and looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Devoted as she may have been, it's not a life many of us would choose ourselves.