What was the most genius criminal move that hoodwinked everyone?

Guy found out that when a gas station lost its satellite connection,

it automatically accepted all credit cards and would presumably process them later.

So he climbed on the roof and covered the dish with foil to force it to lose connection,

and then made charges on a card that was cancelled. An old co-worker told me that for a while a Mexican chain, let's call it Aristotle?

Aristotely? I guess that worked better written down than said out loud.

Nearby us had this weird thing where it wouldn't decline certain credit cards right away.

By the time the message returned that it was declined, they'd already be

out with their food. They used to use empty credit card gift cards to get food all the time.

Huh. About 20-ish years ago, my dad used to own this company, and one of his employees died in a car

accident. In the next few days, my dad received the work logs and books that this guy kept with him.

And that's when he realized this guy was doing offline transactions, what they had to do when a client needed

something after hours. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, it was something to do with the physical

receipt layout, but he'd overcharge X amount for the item, get to work and input Y amount paid,

and have the correct receipt and pocket the difference.

He'd been doing this for years, and my dad didn't even realize. He was never actually caught.

My dad decided to not say anything to the family. Receit doubling. Very common in restaurants that

had paper orders, too. I liked Anthony Cushio's story about an armored truck robber who covered his tracks by first

placing a Craigslist ad to get a bunch of suspects to show up to an imaginary construction job

near the scene of the crime dressed like him, like yellow vest, safety goggles, blue shirt,

respirator mask, and work boots. Cushio's undoing would come a month later when a homeless man reported to the

police that several weeks before the robbery, he had seen a man drive up to the Bank of America

...