We live in a civil society and have a proper process of dealing with pretty much any injustice in the world. This, however, doesn’t stop folks from arguing that an eye for an eye should still be a thing sometimes.
A Redditor recently joined the ranks of a 20% statistical likelihood of a car getting stolen and returned after finding out that his roommate had been stealing from him for years. To top it all off, the car got a nocturnal photoshoot doing donuts at an intersection. Oh, what camera were they using? A red light camera.
More Info: Reddit
Not everyone is blessed with a good roommate, but luckily some do end up lucky. Or at least they thought so until an interesting twist of events happens
Image credits: sk (not the actual photo)
This guy found out his good friend roomie was actually a bit of a thief, and so appropriate countermeasures had to be done to rectify the situation
Image credits: Redditous-Randomous
The Redditor ended up taking some early morning drives around the area in the roomie's car to inconvenience his wallet and his routine
Image credits: Bjørn Bulthuis (not the actual photo)
A Redditor by the nickname of u/Redditous-Randomous recently shared a story of petty revenge involving a thieving roommate and said roommate’s car doing donuts in the early hours of the morning at a well-surveilled intersection.
Long story short, OP found out that his roommate—a good friend, in fact—had stolen something from him. In fact, he had been doing so for years, which explained a lot of missing items. Confrontation did absolute zero in terms of delivering justice, so the feeling of betrayal was even worse. But, that was also a good reason for OP to partake in a taste of his own medicine.
One morning (very early morning) OP took his roomie’s car keys (conveniently accessible on a hook near the door), slapped on a ski mask and went for a short ride. So, on 5 different mornings, OP drove in the roomie’s car to an intersection that he knew had red light cameras and proceeded to do donuts and other sorts of vehicular shenanigans, making for a pretty cool photoshoot.
And by cool, I mean don’t try this at home, kids, leading to what could quite possibly be several hundred red light tickets. The roommate had no clue until one fateful day—when OP had already moved out—he started getting heaps of tickets in the mail. Cue the Grinch’s evil grin.
Image credits: Dave Dugdale (not the actual photo)
Well, at least 7,000 people seemed to agree, as that’s how many upvotes the post got. Now, to make things clear, one person pointed out that there is a non-zero chance that all of these tickets could have been resolved very easily because a ski mask was involved (obvious malevolence). However, OP pointed out that it should still have quite likely wasted a lot of the roomie’s time because you’d have to go through court and the rest of the appeal process, which would be an absolute mess.
Other commenters elaborated on how this could’ve been much worse in their countries, with one commenter explaining that just 4 of these offenses would already mean their driver’s license would be revoked and that’s besides thousands of dollars in fines. And the ski mask wouldn’t help.
It is important to note that, yes, this was a felony, no two ways about it, but OP did point out that now, being a mature adult, he would never do something like it. But the version of him from 20 years ago had a different way of approaching things, and, hey, it got results.
Image credits: PhotoMIX Company (not the actual photo)
Bored Panda got in touch with u/Redditous-Randomous, who provided some context to the story and clarified some things.
"I must admit that having reread this post a few times, I could have been more accurate in how I worded it," elaborated OP. "The intersection is a very big one and you can see for a long distance in all directions. The maneuvers I made were more like a series of U turns than doughnuts. So basically I would drive up to the intersection and if it was clear I would blow the red light, then clear the island on the other side and do a U turn. In this way, I was fairly certain no cop was there."
"It was in the mid 2000s, so surveillance wasn’t what it is today. Also, it probably wasn’t hundreds of tickets. Probably more like dozens to maybe 100. Still a [crap] ton to be sure."
OP noted that his roomie mostly stole money and some marijuana, among other things. He turned out to be a particularly sneaky thief, and denied it all the way up to being caught red handed. All in all, it was around $3,000 that he had stolen from OP, which, back then, was a lot for him.
"In retrospect, this was nuts. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone," continued OP. "I didn’t mention it in the post because I wanted to stay focused, but I also got my money back from him by ending the lease and having him sign over his interest in the security deposit. The security deposit covered most of what he owed but he did also have to fork over some cash."
"I got him to go along because I threatened to go to his dad about it. His dad was over the top conservative and I had lots of dirt about smoking weed, other drugs, etc. in text and chat threads, pictures, videos, etc., so I could have buried him with his dad.
He concluded: "He knew me well. We were friends for at least 5 years. I’m sure he knew it was me behind the tickets but I’m sure the dirt I had on him kept him from coming after me about it. It also would have been hard to prove since we rode in, moved, and even borrowed each others cars all the time."
Image credits: Shadman Samee (not the actual photo)
It goes without saying that nothing justifies a crime, so don’t do any of this at home, folks! What you can do at home is keep on reading because knowledge is power.
The previously (like, way in the beginning) mentioned 20% of all cars stolen actually being returned comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey. It deduced that 1 in 5 vehicles are eventually returned to their owners, though there is also a 30% chance that the car will no longer be a car, but rather just a pile of metal and plastic scraps. Or an interpretation of it. And those who are unlucky and do get a punch in the wallet, on average, suffer around $1,500 in damages.
Folks in the Midwest are the most likely to see their cars again if they happen to be stolen, with a 24% chance. The Northeast, however, has it harder with just 14%. But the upside is that they are returned faster, taking around 7 days to do so compared to the national average of 11 days.
While the South teeters at around the national average of this statistic, it is by far the region where the average price of a stolen car is the highest—both for cars stolen and cars that were returned. That’s $10,147 and $9,081 respectively.
The silver lining here is that the police are more likely to find a stolen car than they are the thief. And if the car is found, most don't feel bothered to go look for the thief too. So there’s that.
What are your thoughts on any of this? Share your takes or related stories in the comment section below!
Folks found this quite an entertaining story, with the post garnering a bit over 7K upvotes
