The Daily Misanthrope

June 20, 2026  •  Misanthrope Index: 9.2 — Full Walken

Folly of the Day

A Milwaukee Police Officer Ran 179 Searches on the Department's License-Plate Surveillance Network to Stalk a Woman He Had Dated and Her Ex, Typing 'Investigation' as the Justification Every Time. He Was Exposed When One of His Targets Looked Up Her Own License Plate on a Public Audit Website.

Ayala used a mass-surveillance system to track two private citizens 179 times, logged a fake justification on every single query as though the log were decoration, and was undone by the one feature of a surveillance network he had apparently never considered — that it keeps a record, and that the people being watched can read it.

Source: FOX6 Milwaukee

The Wire

A Former Jewelry-Store Employee Stole Roughly 126 Pieces of Merchandise Through a Camera Blind Spot, Then Pawned Them Across 58 Separate Pawn Tickets — Each One Requiring Her Passport, Her Signature, and Her Fingerprint. She Fled to Panama. Detectives Followed the Paperwork.

Herrera Acosta found the one spot her employer's cameras could not see and then disposed of the proceeds at pawn shops that, by law, recorded her passport, her signature, and her fingerprint fifty-eight separate times — building a notarized index of her own crime that remained legible long after she had relocated to another country.

Source: CBS12

The Wire

A Pennsylvania Porch Pirate Was Filmed by a Doorbell Camera Stealing an Amazon Package and Fleeing in a Honda With a Distinctively Loud Muffler. Days Later, He Returned to Steal From the Same Camera-Covered Neighborhood, in the Same Audibly Unmistakable Car.

Velez committed his thefts in a vehicle that announces its arrival from a block away and returned to the exact doorbell cameras that had already recorded both him and the car, apparently confident that a neighborhood watching its own porches would fail to recognize the loudest vehicle on the street the second time it came back.

Source: CBS News Philadelphia

The Wire

An Aspiring Chicago Rapper Robbed a Facebook Marketplace Seller of Shoes and Clothes, Then Within 24 Hours Relisted the Exact Stolen Items for Sale on the Same Facebook Profile He Had Used to Arrange the Robbery — While Posting Selfies Wearing Them.

Holmes robbed a man using his own named Facebook profile and then, within a day, used that same profile to advertise the stolen goods for resale and to model them in selfies — conducting the entire crime, from arrangement to liquidation, under a single account bearing his face and name.

Source: CWB Chicago

The Wire

A Florida Man Showed Up at a 3 a.m. Interstate Traffic Stop in a Suit, Announced He Was the Driver's Attorney, and Began Arguing the Deputies Lacked Probable Cause. He Could Not Produce a Bar Card or Any Proof He Was a Lawyer. He Was Charged With Practicing Law Without a License.

Schaufus voluntarily inserted himself into a police traffic stop in order to perform the role of attorney, selecting as his audience the one set of people empowered to ask for the credentials he did not have — and obligingly proved he was practicing law without a license by attempting to practice law in front of them.

Source: ClickOrlando

The Wire

A Fired IT Worker Spent Nearly Two Years Sabotaging His Former Iowa School District — Deleting Its Accounts, Wiping Data, Locking Teachers Out Mid-Lesson. The FBI Identified Him After a Coworker at His New Job Found a USB Drive He Had Left Behind and Turned It In. It Held 300+ Stolen Credentials and the District's Floor Plans.

Potter, a professional whose entire occupation was the control of digital access, waged a two-year campaign of deletion against his old employer and then left the single most incriminating object he owned — a drive holding hundreds of stolen credentials and the building's floor plans — sitting at his next job for a colleague to find and hand to the FBI.

Source: The Register

Black-Robed Egomania

A Los Angeles Judge Repeatedly Told His Courtroom That His Bailiff Was 'Authorized to Shoot' Anyone Who Crossed the Line in Front of the Bench, Told Two Attorneys He Would Shoot Them Himself, and Told a Retired Judge She Was Lucky the Bailiff Wasn't There to Be Ordered to Shoot Him. He Was Publicly Admonished.

Monguia presided over a room in which he alone could not be interrupted, corrected, or removed, and chose to fill that room with repeated invocations of his bailiff's authority to shoot the people standing before him — a man treating the near-absolute safety of the bench not as a duty to be careful with his words but as a license to menace everyone who could not answer back.

The Siren Ledger

A Cocoa Beach Man Accepted a Facebook Friend Request From a Stranger Who Shared Mutual Friends, Was Moved to WhatsApp and Shown Crypto 'Trades' Returning 40%, and Was Convinced It Was Real by a Single Successful $3,800 Withdrawal. He Then Liquidated His 401(k) and Savings. His App Showed $2.5 Million. A Blocked $395,000 Withdrawal Revealed It Was All Fabricated.

Dunlap was permitted to withdraw $3,800 — the entire cost, to the scammers, of the conviction that the other $2.5 million was equally real — and on the strength of that single returned deposit he emptied his retirement into a screen of numbers controlled by a stranger he had met through a friend request, having reasoned that the test he was allowed to pass was proof rather than bait.

LazyTown

A California Commercial Trucker Was Pulled Over and Had His Rig Towed on the Spot Because Its Registration Had Been Expired Since 2024 — More Than a Year of Illegal Operation Prevented by a Renewal That Takes Minutes Online.

The driver ran a commercial trucking operation — a business whose entire viability depends on the truck being on the road — for more than a year past the registration expiration, declining the few minutes of online renewal that stood between him and legality, until the state collected the deferred effort all at once in the form of a tow truck.

Source: Yahoo Autos

Campus Watch

KeroNgb Files a New Entry: 'DUMBEST Students In The USA! UNREAL!'

Source: YouTube / KeroNgb

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