MySpace Helps Track Down Suspected Monkey Thief

Social networking can do plenty of things. This may be the first time, though, we’ve heard of it leading to the arrest of a suspected monkey thief.

Police in Pennsylvania had been looking for the guy since March. He’s accused of snatching two monkeys from the Wild World of Animals in the town of Eighty Four. He’d be on the run for months since missing a court date this past spring.

Then came the previously untapped primate power of MySpace. A prosecutor looked up the accused monkey man’s page and discovered he’d posted his new phone number and address there. (The page wasn’t even set to be private.) Authorities used that info to easily find him and arrest him.

The moral of the story: If you steal monkeys and run away from the law, make sure your MySpace page is set to “private” before posting your contact information. Otherwise, you’ll end up being the one in the cage playing with his own poo.