Facebook Privacy Takes Down Stupid Criminal
Our regular readers will be more than aware that “Facebook privacy” are two words we use regularly to warn them of the pending dangers of sharing too much information.
New York resident Aidan Folan will be all too aware of the consequences of sharing too much information as he is being introduced to his jail cell, sometime right about now.
21 year old Mr. Folan, from Brooklyn, may just have unwittingly awarded himself the dubious honour of the most stupid criminal ever, after a series of catastrophic choices on his behalf led to his arrest for a mugging that he committed last month.
March 9th, and Aidan Folan commits a heinous and disgustingly brutal subway mugging on a defenseless 56 year old woman who managed to miraculously escape with only minor injuries. Folan, hardly the criminal mastermind, opted to carry out his crime wearing a black hooded jumper emblazoned with both his fraternity letters and his pledge nickname ”stugots”. That would be mistake number 1.
Mistake number 2 occurred after his entire attack was caught on the subway CCTV surveillance, allowing police to clearly observe mistake number 1.
It took almost a month for the police to release the CCTV footage, which went public on Tuesday, April 2nd. Popular New York based blog Gawker.com posted the footage on their site to help the police identify the criminal.
Enter Facebook, along with mistakes 3,4,5 and 6. Why another 4 mistakes, you ask? Well that just happens to be the same number of public photos Aidan Folan was tagged in on Facebook, wearing the same black hooded jumper, taken on the same night he committed his crime. Yes, apparently he is just that stupid.
Needless to say, after Gawker.com posted the CCTV footage of the attack it took their Internet sleuths only a matter of hours to track down the hapless felon’s open profile on Facebook – incriminating photos and all.
A user by the name “secretsout” posted a link to Folan’s Facebook profile in the comments section of the Gawker article, thus leading to a barrage of insulting yet entirely deserved comments filling up Folan’s profile.
According to Bronx News, soon after Folan was arrested and charged with robbery and assault.
So the moral of the tale is to always ensure your Facebook privacy settings are as strong as they can be. Unless of course you are a criminal, in which case the more stupid you are, the better.
Hat tip to The Black Knight from The Bulldog Estate for bringing to light the story.
Further reading – Gawkers take on the incident.