Friday, November 19, 2010

Notorious Snowboarders - The Dumb and Dumber Snowboarding Bank Robbery

 
Last week we wrote an uplifting article recognising some of the fine upstanding snowboarders who go to great lengths to give back to the community and help improve the world around us. This week we look at a lad who is a complete wanker...


In 2005 Australian snowboarders Anthony Prince and Luke Carroll were spending the season in Vail, when they decided, after knocking back a few too many drinks, that they should rob a bank. And so began the legend of the Dumb and Dumber bank robbers.

Four years of jail time later Anthony Prince is releasing a book of his experiences called Bank Robbery for Beginners. To cut a long story short here’s a few quick guidelines we picked up from his experience:
  1. Don’t use BB guns. These are inappropriate weapons of intimidation.
  2. Don’t rob the bank where you are a regular customer.
  3. If you are going to brazenly ignore point 2 make sure you don’t have distinctive Aussie accents. You will almost certainly be identified by the police within 8 minutes of committing the crime.
  4. Do make your initial getaway on a snowboard, carrying bags stuffed with $130,000 of notes. This is of course awesome.
  5. Don’t give the taxi driver a $20,000 cash tip. This just might make him suspicious and it’s apparently not quite enough for him to keep his suspicions to himself. Try $30,000 next time.
  6. If you do somehow make it to an airport, don’t buy one-way tickets to Mexico as this is considered to be textbook dodgy behaviour.
  7. Similarly, don’t use cash to purchase your one-way tickets to Mexico.
  8. Don’t take time out of your airport escape to take pictures of yourself with the stolen money in the toilets.


If you have ignored most of these rules do expect the following repercussions:
  1. You will be surrounded and arrested by 30 armed FBI agents as you leave said toilets.
  2. You will be dubbed the Dumb and Dumber bank robbers by the press and subjected to international ridicule.
  3. You will spend the next 4 years in the slammer.
  4. You will join a white supremacist gang called the Dirty White Boys.
  5. You will be deported after serving your sentence.
  6. You will release a ghost written book about your experiences.
  7. You will be subject to international ridicule again. 
  8. You will continue to be a wanker.

The book cover looks like it might have actually been produced by a prison artist
PhotoShop for Beginners.

This would probably be a more apt cover.

The release of the book has been accompanied by Anthony Prince going on a PR charm offensive. Here he is explaining his actions to a TV show in New Zealand. You’ve got to love how these antipodean news presenters don’t fuck about.

He talks a lot about feeling regret but you start to get a sense that maybe nothing has really changed and that he’s actually a pretty nasty piece of work. Here is him explaining why he joined the white supremacist gang in prison, as you do.

It’s quite a strange situation for an ex-convict to be able to release a book about his experiences. Most countries including the US and Australia have laws that prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes that would prevent this. Anthony Prince has managed to get away with this because he committed the crime in one country and he has released the book in another. Sadly it’s now thrown up an interesting example of another of the reasons why this isn’t usually allowed to happen.

As part of the publicity push an extract of the book was released that covered the events of the robbery itself. In the extract he makes himself out to be a nice and caring robber-type, while his friend Luke Carroll was the thug. Unfortunately this was the way that one of the innocent parties, Jessica Gunther who was the bank teller in the branch that Anthony Prince robbed, found out that a book had been released: 

Luke then turned to Jessica, who was wet with hysteria.

‘Where’s the fucking money?’ he shouted.

I don’t know what Jessica’s answer was – she was so fucked up she could barely speak, and her words were coming out as gibberish.

Understandably Jessica Gunther was not all that happy. She had initially forgiven Prince for what he had done by contacting him on Facebook after his release. However Anthony Prince didn’t bother treat her with quite the same respect as he was writing this book. Jessica Gunther described the experience on a comment on the Real Vail site... 

Without any warning of my story being in his book and my experience being told from his point of view, you can imagine it was a pretty uncomfortable thing to read. I didn’t even know about the book! 

It made me feel incredibly violated and disrespected. 

After all of the time and mental energy I’d put forth to be at peace with this, after my efforts to forgive him and encourage others to give him a second chance, he’d dropped a bomb on me.

Both Anthony Prince and Luke Carroll are out of jail and back in Australia, but the two men have dealt with things very differently. Where Luke Carroll has kept his head down and is getting on with his life, Anthony Prince is courting publicity.

Since his release Antony Prince has been at pains to explain how bad he felt and how much he regrets his crime, but this doesn’t tally up with his actions. Since committing the robbery he wants forgiveness for, he’s joined a white supremacist gang, he’s pinned as much blame on his friend as he could, he’s offended the innocent people that were caught up in his original crime and by writing a book he’s now looking to profit from his crime.


Related Articles...
For something completely different why not read about the most charitable people in snowboarding

Or, if you are looking for more notorious snowboarders you might want to read about the snowboarder who started a cult

1 comment:

  1. This article rocks and is my favorite one yet about this story. Humor, good points, the best relevant links, LISTS, and more humor. Thank you! -Jessica

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