True Crime Tuesday: Good Intentions Edition

Whichever wise old philosopher coined the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” must have been peeking ahead to today’s True Crime Tuesday.

We open on Ruth Amen, an office manager from Florida. (Of course it’s Florida.)

Ruth, as the HuffPo reports, just wanted to throw her boss a nice surprise birthday party – but she forgot one minor detail.

Amen, 46, who worked at Gulf To Bay Realty, organized the party for one of the owners of the Boca Grande, Fla., business, without getting permission to use company cash to pay for the event.

It turns out, however, that where there’s high-priced cigar smoke, there may be fire:

That inspired those bosses to take a closer look at the books she had handled for them as office manager for 10 years.

After ten years of employment who can say they wouldn’t occasionally misuse office resources? You know how these things start – you bring home a few pens, a couple of sticky note stacks, then, suddenly:

Investigators accused Amen of using nearly $92,000 in company finances to pay her personal credit card debt. She also issued herself $65,000 worth of “extra” paychecks and didn’t deduct the cost of insurance from her paychecks, DigTriad.com reports.

Oops. $157k buys a lot of “extra” sticky notes.

Dustin Canup, 20, and Sareena Morrison, 18, on the other hand, were looking for something more meaningful in their lives than office work – unfortunately, they weren’t content to just buy a puppy.

From westword.com:

According to the Loveland Reporter Herald, which cites an arrest affidavit, police received a tip last week concerning a fifteen-year-old girl with a 970 area code who was advertising for sex online.

Don’t be confused, the girl in question, Morrison, was actually of legal age, but the six-year-old she was attempting to purchase a tryst with clearly wasn’t.

Detectives subsequently traced the number to Morrison, who lives in Berthoud, and laid the groundwork for a sting operation by texting her under the guise of a man with a six-year-old child. Morrison is said to have arranged a meet with father and daughter at a Loveland motel, where she and a male companion would take part in sex acts with the girl.

You may be thinking, “didn’t they watch Dateline’s To Catch a Predator?” to which I would reply: “Yes, probably too much so.”

Shortly after their arrival at the motel, detectives busted Morrison and Canup, who was reportedly packing a large knife and a pair of handcuffs.

[…]

[T]he pair intended to rob the man and take the little girl with them to raise as their own child.