Thieves ‘Butt Dial’ Victim And Leave Voice Mail Plotting Crime


Two thieves in Key West, Florida, probably wish they had locked their smart phone screens after one of them butt dialed their victim and left a voice mail of them discussing what to do with the stolen items.

David Ricky Fanuelsen, 39, and Dean Ellis Brown, 22, have been charged with stealing saws from Concrete Solutions, their former employer.

According to the Miami Herald, the two were caught after one of them butt dialed the company’s office and the call went to voice mail. The men left a recording of themselves talking about how they planned to sell the $8,000 worth of equipment to a pawn shop.

The Grand Forks Herald reports that their boss, Stace Valenzuela, said that when he found three saws missing from a job site both men had been working on, he realized that the voice mail he heard was the Fanuelsen and Brown planning the robbery.

“Talk about bumbling idiots,” Valenzuela said.

Both men admitted to stealing the saws when interviewed by detectives, and were charged with felony grand theft.

Fanuelsen and Brown aren’t the only two “idiots” who have gotten themselves in hot water over an accidental phone call, and Florida seems to be full of people who tell on themselves.

In this 2013 Inquisitr report, a South Florida man was arrested after butt dialing 911 while discussing a murder plot.

In October of 2014, three people in Volusia County, Florida, were arrested on drug charges after butt dialing 911, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The 911 dispatcher overheard the three discussing drugs and “gurggling” sounds in the background like something was boiling. Deputies used cell phone locator data to track the call to a shed, where they found the three cooking a batch of meth when they arrived.

And in December, an Oak Hill, Florida, woman butt dialed 911 while jumping into her getaway vehicle after shoplifting at a Walmart. The police were treated to a more than 18-minute call in which 25-year-old Ashley Malcolm admitted to stealing from the store. The Daytona Beach News Journal summarized the 911 call, in which the woman can be heard shouting orders to the driver of the truck and telling him which streets to take.

At one point, when the driver tells her to stop yelling at him, Malcolm says to the man, “You’re not in trouble right now. You had nothing to do with it. You weren’t inside Wal-Mart stealing.”

On the recording, she can be heard telling the driver that she will tell police she just asked him for a ride and he had no idea what she was up to. She also mentions chemicals in the truck used to make methamphetamine, and says she doesn’t want to get arrested for them.

Police tracked her down by the license number on the truck, and she was charged with retail theft and unlawful possession of chemicals.

Lesson learned? Maybe keeping a smart phone in your pocket isn’t such a good idea if you are a criminal.

[Image via Michael Nagle/Getty Images]

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