I hate when that happens.

That waitress should go buy a lotto ticket.

That waitress should go buy a lottery ticket.

Actually, I love it when a criminal gets caught by his/her own stupidity or bad luck.

The story quotes police Captain Guy Turner as saying:

The odds of this waitress recovering her own license defy calculation.

Balls. What innumeracy. What do they teach in school these days? A few simple assumptions can easily give us a rough calculation.

(1) We know the theft took place in Lakewood, Ohio. Let's assume the thief lives in Lakewood, or at least got rid of the loot in Lakewood. The population of Lakewood is 56,646, of whom 21% are under 18 and 52% are female.

(2) Obviously the only one who could use the stolen license was a female. Let's assume she'd have to be over 18 (so she'd think she's got a decent chance of passing for 21) but less than 28 (so she'd think she's likely to be carded). Using the Census figures, and assuming people are roughly uniformly distributed after age 18 up to age 70, we get about 4300 females in Lakewood between 18 and 28.

(3) Let's assume the waitress serves about 100 such persons per weekend night, of whom 80% are regulars (who are not dumb enough to use a license stolen at the same bar). That means the waitress serves 20 of the 4300 suspect Lakewood females per weekend night, giving a probability the waitress might see her own card as 0.465% per weekend night.

(4) There were 12 weekend nights between the theft and the recovery, for a total probability of about 5.4% that the waitress would spot her own stolen license.

My assumptions could easily be off by factors of 2 and 5 here and there, but probably not by factors of 100 or 1000, so I'd say the real odds are within an order of magnitude of the 0.1 - 1% range. That's not high, but it's not nearly as unlikely as winning the lottery or being struck by lightning (in Ohio).

Carl, I can argue trivial matters over the assumptions, but I concur. I read the comment from the police Captain and thought the same thing. You first have to accept the assumption that the original crime was identity theft, and not a petty crime of stealing the waitress's wallet for money. Once you accept that, the odds of the event occurring seem rather decent.

The ID was after all recovered in the same town it was stolen in. If the police found that remarkable, then the are not very good at solving crimes.

Certainly they're no good at solving crimes of theft. I've never actually heard of a theft being solved when the victim can't supply the police with the thieve's identity.

For example, FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics say that the percentage of car thefts that are "cleared" in the sense that a person has been at least arrested for the crime is 13%. I'd be surprised if that's significantly higher than the percentage of cases in which the victim can identify the thief or in which the car is recovered by accident (e.g. the thief get stopped for a traffic violation).

Given that a car is often the most valuable moveable piece of personal property a person has, is difficult to hide and still use, and can often be identified from a distance (by its license number), I expect it's got one of the best recovery statistics.

Hence it seems reasonable to conclude that, unless the victim already knows who the thief is, the probability of the police solving a case of theft, except by accident, are indistinguishable from zero.

Y'all are overthinking this one a bit...

... What matters is the elegant way in which chance has once again allowed good to prevail over evil. Though, chance has an annoying way of being a double-edged sword in that respect...

Strange things do happen.

Wayne County Michigan, due to a really inefficient register of deeds system has had a massive amount of fraudulent transfers and fraudulent sales of property.

One fellow brought in a deed for transfer to the rgister of deeds, and the clerk that handled the transaction realized it was her house on the deed and she delayed him until the police could arrive.

The fellow was then arrested and clearly hit snake eyes on the unlucky probability roll.

Wasn't it just last year that some guy marched into a bank attempting to cash a check. He was carrying checks and ID with teller's dead husband's name and their address of 30 years on them?

Gotcha!! She said, as she called the cops.

Moronic people should stick to working for manual labor companies. Crime does pay, but it usually cashes out to be 3 to 5 in the steel bar hotel.

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