Food Crimes: Snack Shoplifters and Cop Ravioli

Welcome to Food Crimes, a MUNCHIES blotter that highlights some of the strange and illegal things people do in the name of—or involving—food and drink.

This week, we see some truly bizarre behavior from the sordid underworld of food criminals, ranging from a woman who somehow used beer as a carjacking weapon to a YouTube shoplifter who wants the world to see him sadistically shoving toothpicks into packaged foods. Let's read on, shall we?

Things kicked off last Wednesday with a food criminal so brazen that most would probably just call him idiotic. In Edinburgh, 38-year-old Lynton Frazer was given a three-month jail sentence due to his hunger for trouble—and Weetabix.

Faced with some stomach rumbles one day, Frazer decided to break into the local Oxgangs Police Station—yes, the police station itself—and help himself to an inventive but truly foul mixture of ravioli, milk, and the aforementioned Weetabix. But before you murmur to yourself that that is the type of truly weird stew one would only create while on drugs, know that Frazer's lawyer claims that the crime was an intentional scheme to get locked up so that he could receive free substance abuse treatment. Apparently, it was also the second time that he had broken into that particular station. Sounds like his tenacity finally paid off.

Moving right along, we're faced with another fearless food bandit—this time, across seas in Japan. According to Kotaku, YouTube user "narukami 793" has become the subject of a national manhunt after posting numerous videos of himself shoplifting soda and candy as well as hiding toothpicks into packages of snacks for unlucky shoppers to discover later (hopefully not because they find splintered wood lodged in their throats). Watch below as he sticks a toothpick into a package of vegetable crisps for no apparent reason.

And as he snatches a bar of milk chocolate purely for sport:

The YouTube jerk—who calls his practice manbiki, or "shoplifting"—has been posting these types of videos since December, and is allegedly a 19-year-old gamer but never shows his face on-camera. He does, however, narrate all of his reels, justifying his behavior (look how easy it is to steal stuff!) or describing his process.

To make things extra meta, he has recently taken to posting videos of himself fleeing the police via train and scrolling through stories about himself on the internet. He also says that he sold his Nintendo 3DS to drum up the cash to go on the run. What a sacrifice.

This is one food thief who is gleefully embracing the idea of a "crime spree," like a way-nerdier, way-way-way-less cool Colton Harris-Moore. (As a teen, Harris-Moore burglarized more than 100 houses and stole a plane, a boat, and two cars and successfully evaded authorities for years. Kind of puts candy-bar-stealing into perspective, doesn't it?)

Rounding out today's blotter is an unnamed Oregon woman who is also still walking free, though likely not for long. On Friday, a man was carjacked in Portland by a woman who wielded not a knife or a gun, but a full can of beer, which she threw at the driver of a 2007 Ford Explorer—somehow managing to draw blood with a cylindrical, not particularly heavy object—before making off with his SUV and whizzing away. Dr. McGovern, the victim, was leaving work when the heavyset 20-something woman, who was "out of control" and seemingly on something, assaulted him with the brewski. Though McGovern tried to physically cling to his beloved vehicle, it was successfully kidnapped by the bizarre beer-thrower.

There is one silver lining to this story, however; it proves that Alabama principal Priscella Holley may have been on to something when she recommended that her students pelt armed intruders with cans of food as a means of self-defense.

Sometimes, you've got to fight cans of beer with cans of beans.