What’s next? An e-mail about an African bank account?

This comes courtesy of Reuters…

MIAMI (Reuters) – Police in a Florida city used the promise of economic stimulus checks to lure 76 people to their arrest on a variety of outstanding warrants.

The Fort Lauderdale Police Department set up “Operation Show Me the Money” to round up people wanted on charges ranging from second-degree murder to guns and drug charges to failure to pay child support.

Using the name of the fictitious “South Florida Stimulus Coalition,” police mailed letters asking the suspects to call an undercover phone line and make appointments to claim their money. When they showed up at an auditorium and presented their identification, they were led to an area where uniformed police were waiting to arrest them.

Police said such roundups are safer and more efficient than serving warrants at people’s homes.

“You totally control the environment whereas when you’re walking up to someone’s home there’s an unknown factor there,” Police Sergeant Frank Sousa said on Friday.

The operation ended on Thursday night and Sousa declined to say how much money the suspects were offered.

“They were not large dollar amounts,” he said. “No one was promised thousands of dollars.”

Three sheets to the wind – a German prison escape

This comes courtesy of Reuters…

BERLIN (Reuters) – Two Polish prisoners broke out of a German jail after tying their bed sheets together to abseil down a 15 meter (50 foot) wall, authorities said on Tuesday.

“The wall is pretty high,” a spokesperson for the prison in the southern city of Nuremberg said. “If you fall, you’re dead.”

The two men aged 30 and 37, who were being held on remand, broke through the ceiling of their shared cell to reach the prison roof, then lowered themselves to freedom on the bedding.

Police caught the older man shortly afterwards, but his younger accomplice remains at large, authorities said.

Was former Kentucky basketball coach driven to drink?

Here’s to the Lexington Herald-Reader and USA Today…

What is it about basketball coaches in the state of Kentucky lately?

Rick Pitino admits to having sex with a woman in a Louisville restaurant, and then goes ballistic at the news media yesterday. John Calipari comes to Lexington as the new UK coach, and promptly learns the NCAA has erased his trip to the Final Four with Memphis from the record book.

And now Calipari’s predecessor at UK, Billy Gillispie, has been  arrested in Anderson County in Kentucky and charged with DUI. The Lexington Herald-Leader says Gillispie was released from jail this morning. Police told the TV station Gillispie was pulled over in a white 2009 Mercedes with Texas tags on US 127 after someone reported seeing the car driving erratically.

A male passenger also was arrested and charged with alcohol intoxication.

WLEX-TV says Gillispie told police he and his passenger had been golfing.

Police told WTVQ in Kentucky the arrest was at 2:45 a.m.

This is the third time Gillispie has been arrested for DUI. The previous two were in Texas and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma one was reduced to reckless driving and the coach pleaded guilty. In the Texas one, an El Paso prosecutor ultimately decided there wasn’t enough evidence to determine Gillispie was drunk.

The Texas case drew a lot of attention, however, because Gillispie had been stopped after driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. Also, he handed police officers a credit card instead of his license when he was first asked for identification.

Afterward, Gillispie sent more than 1,000 handwritten letters of apology to UTEP season-ticket holders, according to the El Paso Times.

Gillispie left the UK job in March this year, but still is embroiled in a contract dispute with the school.

Problem? What problem?

This round is on the AP…

ESPANOLA, N.M. — Police said a man was arrested on Monday for his 22nd drunken driving offense — and his blood-alcohol content tested almost five times higher than New Mexico’s legal limit. State Police Lt. Eric Garcia said an officer pulled up to a car parked along a highway and found a 51-year-old man on the ground near his vehicle.

“He was coherent,” Garcia said. “He showed signs of slurred speech, as might be normal for any DWI arrest, which led the officer to believe he might be driving under the influence.”

Garcia said the suspect had to be taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent hospital in Santa Fe, where a blood-alcohol analysis showed a content level of .393 percent. New Mexico’s limit for presumed intoxication is .08 percent.

Police said records showed the man has been arrested five times in New Mexico and at least 16 times elsewhere.

The suspect, who faces a felony DWI charge, was booked into the Santa Fe County jail.

Garcia said records showed the man faces pending DWI charges in Angel Fire and Espanola. He also was served with arrest warrants from San Miguel, Bernalillo and Sandoval Counties — all on DWI-related charges.

Garcia didn’t know if the man had any prior DWI convictions.

Dognappers supply cadavers to medical school

More from Reuters…

LIMA (Reuters) – At least two stolen dogs were found in an operating room used for dissections at the medical school of South America’s oldest university, but its dean denied relying on dognappers to collect specimens for classes.

The University of San Marcos does not have access to enough human cadavers for its students, so they sometimes cut open dogs instead.

Carmen Valverde’s dog Tomas was stolen by two men while she was walking in the working-class Brena district of Lima, and a friend who works at the school’s teaching hospital spotted him by chance in a surgery room where dogs are dissected.

Valverde donned a lab coat and snuck into the hospital to rescue Tomas. Video her friend shot a week ago, aired on local television, shows him sedated, splayed, and strapped to a stainless steel table — just moments away from the knife.

After local newspapers published the story, other people missing dogs rushed to the hospital’s door and one owner found her dog Chico.

“The University of San Marcos still hasn’t apologized for what it has done,” Valverde told Reuters Thursday.

Ricardo Rubios, dean of the medical school, acknowledged that stolen dogs had wound up in the surgery room, but said the school only uses strays for classes.

“I assure you we would have returned the dog. All our experimental surgeries are done to dogs that don’t have owners,” Rubios told Reuters.

Romila Briones, a member of ASPPA, a Peruvian animal rights group, said the law does not protect strays.

“In Europe, they don’t kill animals for education, they use dummies. Unfortunately, animals are just property in the eyes of the law here, like furniture,” Briones said.

Actor pleads guilty to selling Social Security numbers

Thanks to the AP…

NEW YORK — “One Tree Hill” actor Antwon Tanner has pleaded guilty to selling more than a dozen Social Security numbers for $10,000.

Tanner told a federal judge in Brooklyn on Friday that he was a middleman, selling numbers someone else provided. He and his lawyer didn’t comment on how he got involved in the scheme.

Tanner is expected to get as much as a year in prison at his sentencing, set for Nov. 20.

The 34-year-old actor was charged in April with selling 16 Social Security numbers and three bogus Social Security cards.

Tanner plays the character Skills in the CW series. Representatives for the network didn’t immediately return a telephone call Saturday.

Tanner also appeared in the 2005 movie “Coach Carter,” starring Samuel L. Jackson.

Survivor winner jailed for opening his mouth

The Associated Press brings us this reminder to pay your taxes…

NEWPORT, R.I. — The sister of Survivor winner Richard Hatch says she thinks her brother was sent back to jail because he granted an interview to NBC’s “Today” show.

Kristin Hatch told Today on Wednesday that when a sheriff’s deputy came to bring her brother to the Barnstable County Jail in Massachusetts on Tuesday, she overheard him say that Hatch was being jailed because “he did an interview.”

Hatch is staying at his sister’s Newport, R.I. house while on home confinement.

Hatch’s lawyer said Wednesday she still had not been given an explanation as to why he was arrested.

A federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman couldn’t immediately be reached Wednesday.

Hatch was convicted in 2006 for not paying taxes on the $1 million prize he won on the CBS reality show’s first season.

Dallas cop stopped and popped for DWI

This comes from Star Local News in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex…

A Dallas police officer was arrested in Plano for driving while intoxicated after he was involved in a vehicle accident and fled the scene just after 4:45 a.m. Wednesday.

Sr. Cpl. David Aquilar, 35, was stopped a few minutes later by a Plano police officer and charged with a DWI and an accident involving personal injury. He attempted to flee the accident scene at northbound Custer Road and Plano Parkway while driving a 2008 Toyota Tacoma. Aquilar was arrested at Parkhaven Drive and Independence Parkway.

Dallas police officials say Aquilar, a 12-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

That’s why they put locks on doors

Reuters, er… uncovered this one…

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – An extremely drunk, naked man lost his way at a New Zealand hotel and ended up sleeping in the wrong room, forcing its female occupant to hide in the bathroom, local media reported.

The 29 year-old Australian man had gone back the hotel in the resort town of Queenstown with a woman, but got up in the night and wandered into a bedroom where a couple were sleeping.

“He was a bit surprised that there were two people in his room and he was butt naked,” Sergeant Steve Watt of Queenstown police told the Southland Times.

As the intruder slept, the startled woman took refuge in the bathroom as her husband summoned hotel staff.

The man, who could not remember whom he had been with nor what room he had been in, and had no clothes or wallet.

Police gave him a ride home clad in a hotel bathrobe, but let him off after the guests and hotel decided not to press charges.

“It was far too funny,” said Watt.

I guess the flashing lights on the car didn’t clue him in

Courtesy of Reuters…

LONDON (Reuters) – Sunderland midfielder Grant Leadbitter, explaining to a court why he was caught speeding, said he thought the police patrol car following him was in fact a car full of Newcastle United fans chasing him for a fight.

“My heart was beating fast, I was scared and I wanted to get home as quickly as possible,” The Guardian newspaper quoted the Premier League player as telling the court when describing why he had accelerated to 112 mph.

He was on his way back from a night out, which had ended with an altercation with a group of fans from his club’s bitter rivals Newcastle and he thought they were pursuing him.

He was fined 515 pounds ($850) and banned from driving for 14 days.