The first thing this criminal genius did was to place long-distance telephone calls

But there are the not-quite-as-dumb variants. A Seattle friend had a single credit card lifted from a (locked) locker at a health club one lunchtime here, but didn't have a clue (they left everything else alone in his wallet including ~$100 cash) until the next morning when Visa called to see if he was in Las Vegas making multiple $1500 cash advances. Yup, this particular operation Fedexed credit cards to Vegas and they got the money. There may have been multiple cards in the overnight envelope, but he didn't hear any more about it except that they hadn't been caught. Cute, eh?

Jim