Criminal flouts stolen clothes on own public Facebook profile

We have another challenger for the title of most inept criminal caught using social media this week, courtesy of a report on Independent Online.

According to the report, Fatuma Phiri, a domestic helper living in Tembisa in South Africa, decided to help herself to the clothes of her employer, even including the employer’s wedding dress.

Instead of surreptitiously taking the clothes, Phiri would pose in them for photographs that she would subsequently upload to her Facebook account.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Phiri’s Facebook account had the public setting applied to uploaded photos, meaning anyone – including people Phiri wasn’t friends with on Facebook – could see when they navigated to her profile.

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According to the employer they had been scrolling through Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature and that had led to Phiri’s Facebook profile where the discovered the photos of Phiri wearing the stolen garments. They claim that some of the photos were taken in their bedroom. They said…

I feel so violated. I cannot even look at my wedding dress anymore. Some of the buttons are now broken as she tried to force the dress on. This is the dress in which I took sacred vows before God.

How anyone can be so completely oblivious to the potential implications of wearing stolen clothes – or at least clothes worn without the permission of the owner – is quite the mystery. Even if you don’t plan on flouting your crimes online, we still recommend locking your Facebook account down for optimal privacy and security. Read our guide here.

Facebook has quite the history of catching out Internet-incompetent criminals and we have quite the selection of stories on here.

As for Phiri, she was arrested but the charges later dropped. Needless to say, Phiri found herself without a job when she was released.