5 Criminals Whose Bragging Became Evidence

Committing the crime was not enough. Apparently, everyone also needed to hear about it.

A successful crime usually depends on keeping your mouth shut. Unfortunately for the people on this list, staying quiet was apparently harder than the crime itself.

Some posted pictures with stolen cash. Others uploaded videos, announced their plans online, or displayed enough suspicious wealth to attract investigators.

Here are five criminals whose bragging became evidence against them.

#5 Michael LaRock Called the Police to Brag

Michael LaRock had been on the run for about a year when he decided the police needed an update on how well things were going.

The 22-year-old was wanted in New York on burglary charges after being accused of stealing from a motel room. By January 2002, he was living hundreds of miles away in Auburn, Georgia, and had apparently grown confident enough to call the Ticonderoga Police Department himself.

LaRock told officers they would never catch him. Unfortunately, the department had caller ID.

Police traced the call to Auburn and contacted officers there. While the two departments coordinated, LaRock called Ticonderoga a second time and continued talking. During that call, Officer Daniel Charlton heard a doorbell ring in the background.

Someone inside got up to answer it. The person at the door was an Auburn police officer.

Charlton remained on the line as officers entered the residence. LaRock struggled with them, ran outside, and was subdued after a brief chase.

After avoiding capture for a year, LaRock gave police his location while personally explaining why they would never find him.

#4 Dominyk Alfonseca Posted His Own Bank Robbery

On May 4, 2015, Dominyk Antonio Alfonseca walked into a TowneBank in Virginia Beach and handed a teller a note asking for $150,000. The note included the word “please,” instructions about when to trigger the alarm, and a couple of smiley faces.

Then he pulled out his phone.

Alfonseca recorded the teller placing stacks of cash into a bag. After leaving the bank, he uploaded two videos of the robbery and a photograph of the note to Instagram. Police arrested him about 20 minutes later while he was carrying a gym bag filled with money.

His explanation was almost as unusual as the evidence. Alfonseca argued that he had not committed a robbery because he asked politely, carried no weapon, and never threatened the teller. According to him, she could have simply refused.

He also claimed that posting the footage was meant to protect him by proving he was unarmed. It certainly proved something. Just not what he hoped.

Alfonseca pleaded guilty to robbery in December 2015. The following year, he was sentenced to two years and eleven months in jail.

Most suspects make investigators search for video evidence. Alfonseca recorded it, uploaded it, and made sure everyone knew which account it came from.

#3 John Mogan and Ashley Duboe Posed With the Cash

On August 24, 2015, John Mogan walked into the Savings Bank in Ashville, Ohio, handed a teller a demand note, and left with $6,430.

Mogan’s face was covered in tattoos, which presented a fairly obvious identification problem. His girlfriend, Ashley Duboe, reportedly helped disguise him by applying makeup over the tattoos before driving him to the bank.

That part of the plan worked well enough. What happened afterward did not.

Within days, photographs began appearing on the couple’s shared Facebook account. One showed Mogan holding thick stacks of cash while embracing Duboe. Another showed him stuffing a bundle of bills into his mouth. He also posed with the money as though it were a telephone and added captions about how well he was doing.

Investigators received a Crime Stoppers tip and examined Mogan’s background. They learned that he had recently been released after serving five years for another bank robbery. His family also lived near Ashville. Combined with the Facebook photographs, the pieces were not especially difficult to assemble.

Mogan and Duboe were arrested in September. Both later pleaded guilty. Mogan received three years in prison, while Duboe was sentenced to two years for complicity to robbery. They were also ordered to pay $6,430 in restitution.

Posting the photographs did not create the entire case against them, but it gave investigators something unusually helpful: the suspects posing with the exact amount of money stolen.

#2 Andrew Hennells Announced the Robbery on Facebook

On February 13, 2015, Andrew Hennells posted a selfie on Facebook with three words: “Doing. Tesco. Over.”

He was not making a joke or commenting on his evening plans after the fact. Minutes later, Hennells entered a Tesco supermarket in King’s Lynn, England, and demanded money from the customer service desk while armed with a knife.

He escaped with more than £400. Hennells then stole a car from a retired couple who had stopped near a cash machine, adding another robbery to an evening he had already advertised online.

Police arrested him shortly afterward. When officers found him, he was carrying the knife and £410 in stolen cash. His Facebook post remained online, complete with his face, the name of the store, and a timestamp placing it shortly before the robbery.

Hennells pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery and one count of possessing a knife. In April 2015, a judge at Norwich Crown Court sentenced him to four years in prison and described him as posing a high risk of serious harm to the public.

The post was not the only evidence against Hennells, but it removed plenty of mystery from the case. He had announced the target before walking through the door.

#1 Hushpuppi Turned Stolen Wealth Into an Instagram Brand

Ramon Olorunwa Abbas did not post one careless photograph. Under the name Ray Hushpuppi, he built an entire online identity around luxury.

His Instagram account attracted more than two million followers with photographs of designer clothes, private jets, expensive watches, and fleets of luxury cars. He called himself the “Billionaire Gucci Master” and presented the lifestyle as proof of enormous success.

Federal investigators eventually described that lifestyle very differently.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Abbas helped launder money from business email scams, cyber heists, and other fraud schemes targeting victims around the world. Investigators used banking records, messages, email accounts, phone data, identity documents, and his public social-media presence to connect Hushpuppi to Ramon Abbas.

Some of the luxury items were more than decoration. Prosecutors said approximately $230,000 taken from a businessperson trying to finance a school in Qatar was used to buy a Richard Mille watch. That same watch later appeared repeatedly on Hushpuppi’s Instagram account.

Dubai police arrested Abbas in June 2020. He was transferred to the United States and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering in April 2021. Prosecutors said the schemes covered by his plea agreement caused more than $24 million in losses.

In November 2022, Abbas was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $1.7 million in restitution.

That is what puts Hushpuppi at number one. The others bragged about individual crimes. He turned the proceeds of an international fraud operation into a brand followed by millions.