Smooth Criminal Award: Grocery Store Manager Robs Own Clerk at Gunpoint, Doesn't Think to Wear a MaskIt seems logical that a stick-up man ought to do everything in his power to conceal his identity from his robbery victim.
For grocery store manager and would-be robber Nazim Medzhidov, discretion was especially vital: He knocked off his own store in southwestern Moscow, an outlet of the bargain supermarket chain Kopeika, police say. Unfortunately for Medzhidov, it apparently slipped his mind that a simple ski mask could have done wonders for his criminal career.
Medzhidov, 33, is facing up to 12 years in prison for the March 3 robbery, in which he put a gun to a employee -- who, obviously, had no trouble recognizing him -- and forced her to hand over 4 million rubles ($116,000).
The oversight with the disguise doesn't quite fit with Medzhidov's methodical approach to the crime, as described in the police report. According to police, the suspect carefully laid the groundwork for the crime, canceling cash courier visits several days in a row to make sure plenty of money was in the tills, as well as leaving service entrances open and borrowing a gas pistol from some of the maintenance men working at the store.
On the evening of March 3, police say Medzhidov burst into the room where cashier Yekaterina Korovina was handling the money and threatened her with the pistol, which had been used by the maintenance men to shoot rats. Korovina handed over the bags full of cash, Medzhidov fled through the service entrance, and police were on the scene just minutes later.
"Naturally, the young woman named the criminal, after which his place of residence was established," senior city police investigator Robert Akhmetzyanov told Gazeta.
Perhaps Medzhidov recognized that his lack of stealth had doomed him: The next morning he showed up at a police precinct with the stolen cash and turned himself in.
He told police that financial difficulties had pushed him to abandon the ranks of the law-abiding. Medzhidov, in fact, may find a glimmer of sympathy from those who, like your humble narrator, have a dollar mortgage and have watched the value of their rubles decline by some 30 percent over the past several months. "A year ago the man took a dollar [mortgage] to buy an apartment," Akhmetzyanov said. "But the exchange rate of the American currency rose, and the payments shot up."