6 A 48-year-old man, John Hamilton, was arrested because he would not stop cutting the grass at the local public park. He mentioned he was just trying to save the city some money by cutting the 12-inch-long grass in Sandusky Central Park.

The idea of cutting the city grass was inspired by Toledo’s mayor who himself spent time cutting local parks’ grass. Hamilton thought of doing the same by driving around Sandusky and cutting the grass in vacant lots and public parks.

The city workers insisted he stop and presented him the list of lawns they were going to cut. Enthusiastic Hamilton rejected the offer and asked them instead to go cut another lawn while he would finish cutting the grass in Sandusky Central Park.

Soon the police entered the scene. After he ignored their first warning, they arrested him on the second warning and charged him with obstruction and disorderly conduct. The police later said that the problem was that the mower was throwing debris on the sidewalks and the street.

In the wake of this incident, the city officials admitted that there is indeed a shortage of city workers with regards to the mowing work due to budget cuts.

Hamilton was taken to court where he pled not guilty. (1, 2)

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7 In 2010, Slovak security officials had placed explosives in a 49-year-old airline passenger’s luggage for training, and then they forgot to remove them before the plane took off. The unlucky passenger was arrested in Dublin, Ireland where he was returning from his Christmas holiday.

Reports say that the explosives that the Irish man carried were among eight contraband items placed in passenger’s luggage at Bratislava and Poprad-Tatry airports.

Seven of all the items were detected successfully but the eighth one, which was  90g of research-development explosives, was planted in the luggage of an Irish electrician. His luggage escaped detection at Poprad-Tatry Airport in northeast Slovakia, and he continued on his trip without any knowledge of the explosives in his possession.

Slovakia’s ministry of interior had warned the Irish authorities to expect such a passenger, and the carrier too was alerted after his arrival. According to the ministry, it was incomprehensible that the person was put into custody even if the explosives were just samples and completely harmless. They mentioned that the weapons were stable and were not connected to any essential bomb parts.

Mr. Ahern, the Irish man, was quickly released without any charges. (Source)

8 Simon Bunce was arrested for buying child porn and was falsely branded as a pedophile in 2004. He lost his job and family over the issue only to have it revealed that someone else in Indonesia had hacked his credit card and was behind all the purchases.

Bunce was a regular Internet shopper, but he only purchased products from secure websites. He was surprisingly caught up in “Operation Ore,” the UK’s largest-ever police hunt directed against Internet pedophiles. Hampshire police arrested him on the suspicion of possessing, downloading, and distributing indecent images of children.

They confiscated every tech item in Bunce’s place including his computer, flash drives, CDs, and floppy disks.

Bunce was working for £120,000 a year, and after his employers learned about the charges, he was immediately fired. Only his wife, Kim, stood by his side for all this time. Even his father and siblings disowned him.

Bunce was alarmed by his tarnished reputation, so he investigated further into the matter.

It was found that a US portal named “Landslide” was the gateway for payments related to hundreds of retail websites. He downloaded the related information on access logs and credit cards using the US Freedom of Information Act. Only then it was revealed to him that his credit card details were used by someone in Jakarta, Indonesia.

In September 2004, Bunce was proven innocent, and the police assured him that they would not proceed with any action against him. (Source)

9 Raphael Gray, a hacker, posted stolen data of more than 6,500 credit cards and boasted that law enforcement was too incompetent to stop him. His arrogance annoyed an ex-hacker, Chris Davis, compelling him to find Gray’s information and notify the FBI about the crime. As a result, Gray was arrested.

Over a period of a month, between February and March 2000, the teenage Welsh hacker had hacked and posted the details of thousands of credit cards. Gray, aka “Curador,” managed to get his hands on more than 26,000 payment records, up to 23,000 credit cards, from nine e-commerce websites in multiple nations. He operated everything from the bedroom of his home in Clynderwen, West Wales.

“Curador” was over-confident about his anonymity and thought that the police would never be able to find him.

Chris Davis, a former hacker, was deeply insulted by Gray’s arrogance, so he tracked him down in just an hour. Ironically, Davis mentioned in an interview that it was fairly easy to find Curador’s information. FBI, along with British police, finally arrested the cocky hacker in March 2000.

Gray was sentenced to three years in a probation program for his crime under community rehabilitation. (1, 2, 3)

10 Angela Voelkert created a fake Facebook profile of a teenage girl and sent a friend request to her ex-husband, David. Then she used transcripts of their chats to get him arrested. However, he was released and freed from all the charges when he presented a notarized affidavit, providing he knew it was his ex-wife all along.

Angela, who was 29, used the name, “Jessica Studebaker” for her 17-year-old teenage-girl fake profile. Her intention for creating the account was to extract information from her husband that she could use against him in their ongoing child custody fight.

David, who was 38, played along with Jessica because he knew it was his ex-wife. He reportedly did exchange messages with Jessica that said he was tracking his ex-wife by placing a GPS device in her car.

David had smartly provided FBI agents with a notarized affidavit dated 25 May 2009. In the document, he asserts his suspicion about the fake Facebook profile and says that he was lying to this person to gain positive proof that it was his wife.

David Voelkert had to endure four days of custody before all of his charges were dropped, and he was released on 8 June. (Source)