Maybe He Misunderstood “Money Laundering”

Back when I was in university, twenty years ago, the college I attended had a student laundrette in the basement of one of the buildings. There were prominent notices stating that the laundrette was monitored by CCTV, and indeed a campus urban legend that the porters sold tapes of couples who got rather too close there on weekends.

This didn’t stop one enterprising young man who blew through his student loan in record time and found himself out of money a few weeks into his first term. He hit upon the brilliant idea of using what little funds he had left to buy a crowbar and then going down one evening to force the coin boxes on the machines.

This played out precisely how you’d expect: he was spotted almost immediately, and one of the porters locked the one access door of the laundrette while another called the police. When the criminal less-than-mastermind tried to leave, he found the door locked against him, and before he could resort to more drastic action, the police arrived to let him out and take him somewhere nice and quiet for the night.

He was, of course, expelled for his actions, and for the rest of the term, the main beneficiary of the bungled robbery was a nearby private laundrette that was more than happy to take students’ washing while the college laundrette was closed for repairs.