Fugitive Tweets 'Catch Me If You Can' While On The Run, Is Promptly Caught Due To Tweet

from the please-don't-have-children dept

Dumb criminals and the internet make for a truly fun experience. Whether it's butt-dialing 911 while you're discussing your murder plot, getting nabbed from posting your own food porn, or bragging about that bank you robbed on YouTube, the intersection of criminality, stupidity and internet connectivity is a more humorous place than the NAACP headquarters on Paula Deen Appreciation Day. Idiotic bad guys never seem to cease providing us with entertainment, so here we go again with your dumb ass criminal report.

Wanda Podgurski of California really, really didn't care to work for a living, so she decided to pretend like she fell at her home in 2006 and then collected nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in disability claims from seven insurance agencies and the government. As she was collecting this money for the hardship of falling down, something I do every Saturday night around 2am, she was injuredly galavanting all over the world with her boyfriend.

During a time when she was allegedly disabled, Podgurski traveled to the Dominican Republic, New York, Seattle, Boston, Fort Lauderdale and other destinations, prosecutors said. Among her trips was a 16-day tour to China in 2008 with a boyfriend, prosecutors said.

She got caught, of course, arrested, and then freed on $500k bail during her lengthy trial. Which, of course, she failed to show up for, because participating in your own defense is a ton of freaking work and we already discussed how much Podgurski hates work. Instead, she decided an extended vacation in Mexico was in order. Convicted in absentia to 20 years in the clink, the California justice system was unfortunately unable to figure out where Wandering Wanda was. Until, that is, Podgurski decided to tweet:

Catch me if you can.

— Wanda podgurski (@wanda_podgurski)

You already know the rest of the story before I tell it to you, don't you? The Fugitive Task Force handed things over to the Computer And Technology Crime High-Tech Response Team, which then used the tweet to help locate our idiotic subject and win the shortest legal pissing match ever played out over social networking. She was arrested in Rosarito, Mexico, arraigned shortly thereafter, and D.A. Bonnie Dumanis appears to be taking the taunt into consideration in her prosecution.

“The defendant in this case was brazen in both the large-scale fraud she committed and the way she mocked the criminal justice system,” said Dumanis.

Enjoy your 20-plus years, Wanda. And try to survive prison as a 60 year old woman...if you can.

Filed Under: social media, stupid criminals, wanda podgurski