Dateline: SwitzerlandThe French language newspaper 20 Minutes reports the 20-year-old son of a Swiss millionaire set fire to his $245,000 Ferrari sports car so that he could get a new one. The car was one of 15 high-end automobiles, including a Lamborghini, which the 20-year-old’s father purchased for him. The young man had also been given a property portfolio worth around $30 million and was on an allowance of $10,000 per month. Despite the wealth, the unnamed 20-year-old evidently did not appreciate his Ferrari 458 Italia one bit. He was allegedly advised by a car dealer to commit insurance fraud to get rid of it. The young man took a trip over the border in southern Germany with three accomplices. He paid the accomplices to torch the vehicle while he hung out at a massage parlor. Unfortunately for him security cameras identified the men who set fire to the expensive automobile. The 20-year old was eventually sent to court where he was sentenced to 22 months’ probation and fined $32,000. We assume his dad bought him a new car anyway.Dateline: MinnesotaThe Post-Bulletin in Rochester reports a woman is accused of taking a luxury ride in a limousine to do a little shoplifting. The woman allegedly took the rental limo from a downtown Rochester hotel to the Apache Mall, stole about $300 worth of “headbands and miscellaneous clothing items” and then called the limo for a ride back home. Police were tipped off when they got a call from staff at Scheels All Sports sporting goods store, who said the woman fought with security before running off. While police searched the area around the store, the limo driver stopped and asked who they were looking for. The driver told officers the description sounded like the woman who’d just called him for a ride back to downtown Rochester. Officers followed him to the pickup spot and arrested the woman. Dateline: IllinoisA 44-year-old man accused of stealing a vibrator from an Orland Park sex shop signed his name as “Obama is a criminal” in an official police document. The shoplifter, whose real name is Christopher Hucko, was arrested last month after an employee at the Orland Park Lover’s Lane reported seeing the suspect walking around with a $48 sex toy stuffed in his pants. By the time officers arrived at the adult business, located about 25 miles southwest of Chicago, Hucko was leaving the store “with a large bulge in his pants,” according to the Orland Park Patch. When an officer asked about the suspicious package, Hucko allegedly said “that he had a tattoo of a cherry on his penis and asked me if I wanted to see it,” according to the police report. The officer searched the suspect and found a pink “G-Spot Delight” vibrator hidden in his underwear. Hucko told police he had no idea how the sex toy got there. Police also found marijuana and a pipe on the man. After Hucko was arrested, he was asked to sign a Miranda rights consent form, which he did using the words “Obama is a criminal.” The president-hating dildo lover was charged with retail theft, possession of cannabis and possession of drug paraphernalia.Dateline: New YorkA “Game of Thrones”-loving lawyer is demanding the court let him settle a civil suit filed against him with a “trial by combat.” Richard Luthmann, 35, represented the losing side in a 2013 dispute between two investment firms. Now he says the winning side and its lawyers filed a civil suit against him when his client vanished without paying more than $500,000 in judgements. The lawsuit alleges Luthmann helped his client hide assets to avoid paying the settlement. Luthmann was having none of it, though. “This is not a lawsuit anymore, this is an absurdity,” Luthmann told the Staten Island Advance. “So I will give them absurdity in kind.” In his July 21 court filing, Luthmann wrote “Defendant invokes the common law writ of right and demands his common law right to Trial By Combat as against Plaintiffs and their counsel, whom Plaintiff wishes to implead into the Trial By Combat by writ of right.” According to Luthmann trial by combat remains a legal option. The lawyer says his years of watching “Game of Thrones” have prepared him for such an eventuality. “I’d go clad in the armor of Robert Baratheon, warhammer in hand,” he told reporters. The plaintiffs in the case seem unimpressed with Luthmann’s medieval legal maneuvering. “It should be clear that we do not find the brief amusing and, we believe, neither will the court, both from a legal and ethical perspective,” attorney Richard Chusid said in a statement.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
