Reports HuffPo:

Employees at a Telefonica Movistar cell-phone store in Morelia, Mexico say they arrived Tuesday morning to find that the store had been broken into. An examination of the shop revealed the only items missing were hollow replica phones for display that are completely useless for making calls.

Employees say the clueless thieves overlooked real cell phones and cash in another part of the shop.

Even though the hot goods are nearly worthless, detectives are still on the case, meaning these nimrods could eventually serve some jail time for their hollow plastic haul.

Updated: Reader Evan makes a good point. These empty phones could very well be "drug mules" for border crossings. Here's hoping we're just dealing with some dumb thugs. [Huffington Post - Thanks, Scotland]

The con was simple (and old): A group of British con men showed the German bargain hunters a few iPods, laptops and other gear as "proof" of their authenticity; offered to sell them hundreds of second hand iPods at basement prices; and then proceeded to hand over a 4-lb. sack filled with potatoes instead.

They made off with about $972 for their efforts, along with the knowledge that they probably took advantage of people who were about to take those "iPods" and resell them again for a high markup. Too bad, so sad!

Regardless, the Polizei are on the case, and there no doubt will be a very large, bitter serving of German potato salad on someone's dinner table very soon—provided the authorities return their hard-earned wares, now evidence, in a timely fashion (pictured). [Orange - Thanks, Sigurd]

Now they've turned their eyes toward electronic heists. At a Best Buy in Tulsa, the burglars entered the store by breaching the ceiling, rappelling down to the store office and cutting a hole into it, taking care of the alarms and surveillance of the store, and then took around 50 laptops and 60-inch plasma TVs. And then they took the safe, weighing a few thousand pounds, which is evidently a trademark of this particular ring.

Their earlier exploits make equally interesting reads. Like when they hit a jewelry store tunneling through to it from an adjoining business. Again they took the safe along with the jewels. Last December, they managed to somehow take 60 large appliances from a Hahn Appliance Center by way of an Office Depot, which would no doubt require a massive truck or two to pull off.

Authorities have nothing on these guys. They take what they want and no one finds it ever again. Of course we don't condone robberies at Gizmodo, but if they are ever caught in the future, I just hope they have some pretty hi-tech methods to dish out on, because there's nothing better than custom gadgetry. – Kevin Hall

Professional Burglary Ring On The Loose [KOTV News via CrunchGear]

You can even set the computer to automatically upload the pictures to an FTP so you can track the thief remotely. Though if you're anything like us, it'll probably be full of pictures of yourself (see Adam of Lifehacker) in various states of confusion as you fat finger your way to a failed login once again. – Jason Chen

Take iSight snapshots during invalid login attempts [Mac OS X Hints via Lifehacker]