truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

George Dalmas III, 48, a 20-year, mid-level CIA employee, pleaded guilty in Fairfax, Va., in December to breaking into 10 homes and stealing many items of expensive jewelry, plus 1,074 pairs of women's underpants, all of which Dalmas carefully mAin'tained, in that, said the prosecutor, he was most of all a pack rat.

Robbers stole $70,000 from the Lucky Dollar Casino in Greensburg, La., in November, and, acting on a deal- seeking tip from one of the robbers, police checked a creek near Baton Rouge, where two of the three moneybags were recovered. A search downstream turned up the third, which had been carried away by beavers and used in the construction of their dam, with apparently all of the money still inside. Jacqueline Wall, 25, was charged, and at least one other arrest was expected.

Least Competent Criminal: It was one of the classics, but it happened anew, in Bloomington, Ill., in October. Donald R. Hilger was arrested and charged with robbing 11 local businesses over the previous two weeks. He was picked up shortly after a robbery of a Jewel/Osco store, and police brought two of that robbery's witnesses by the arrest scene to see if they could identify him. According to police, however, as soon as the employees spotted Hilger, Hilger pointed at one of them and blurted out, "That's the one I robbed."

It's a bank robbers' dilemma: He needs to put on his mask soon enough so no one can see his face, but not too soon. In unrelated attempted bank robberies in Hampstead, N.C. (Carolina First Bank, September), and Versailles, Ill. (Farmers State Bank, June), alert employees merely walked over and locked the doors when they spotted men approaching the banks wearing, respectively, a ski mask and a face-covering stocking. The police were quickly called in both cases, and suspects were in custody minutes later. [Springfield Journal-Register-AP, 6-30-04

A man named Ian Fleming, 33, was arrested in September in New York City after he attempted to deposit bogus, computer-generated checks into his account at a Commerce Bank in Forest Hills, in the amounts of, respectively, $5 billion and $6 billion. Police said that the week before, Fleming had done a trial run by successfully depositing bogus checks in the amounts of $350 and $1,300 and thus probably felt he was ready to move on up.

Paul Michael Callahan, 32, was arrested in Boston in August after, according to police, a short career as a bank robber, which started badly when Callahan tried to hold up the copy shop at Boston University, believing it was a bank. (The clerk asked, "Do you know you're in a copy store and all we can give you is copies?") Callahan fled but allegedly robbed a Fleet Bank branch a few minutes later (getting less than $200) and then a Citizen's Bank branch, clearing about $2,500. However, the red-dye pack from Citizen's exploded, distracting him, and then his getaway car got a flat tire, and police found him hiding in a gas station.