Human courtship is a complicated procedure that often involves some strategic lying ("My feet only smell like that due to all of the karate!"). However, not all men manage to keep their tall tales in check. These are the brave souls whose ridiculous stories of riches and badassery were doomed to be found out, but they pressed on anyway ... for love.
#5. The Man Who Broke into a Mansion and Convinced His Girlfriend That He Owned It
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The only thing more difficult than pulling off a romantic gesture with style is attempting to do so when you're 18. At that point, your experiences with the opposite sex can usually be summed up with the word "haphazard," and your ability to think coherently evaporates the second you remember that your actions make or break your chances of touching boob. Todd D. Blauvelt was well aware of this, so he decided to shoot for overkill when he wanted to impress his girl. In fact, he set out to impress her entire family ... by inviting them to live in the giant luxurious mansion he had just inherited from his grandfather.
There was just one little problem with the plan, which is that he hadn't actually inherited shit. Clearly the only solution was to break into a random 6,000-square-foot luxury vacation home, set up shop, and invite his prospective in-laws to live in the place. And they accepted, because it probably seemed impossible that the whole thing could be a big, stupid lie.
Surely Blauvelt had the common sense to make sure "his" new bachelor pad belonged to, say, an eccentric billionaire who owns a hundred houses and never visits them?
Nope! His lovingly crafted lie lasted for one goddamn hour. The actual owner of the place bumped in while Blauvelt's in-laws were still arguing over bedrooms, gave them one look, and called the cops.
Jupiterimages/Polka Dot/Getty ImagesBut not before the squatters ate all the food and licked all the silverware.
Going from a rich, charitable mansion owner to a lying felon in one fell swoop is a big nut shot for anyone. However, Blauvelt's problems were just beginning: It turns out that the reason he assumed that his girlfriend would be impressed by a large-scale re-enactment of "playing house" was that she was still pretty much at an appropriate age. The cherry on this whole stupidity cake was that the lady of Blauvelt's dreams was only 15.
When the police turned up, Blauvelt's feet didn't touch the ground. He was arrested and charged with sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child, along with many interesting burglary-related things. His girlfriend and her family faced no repercussions, because apparently there are no laws against being incredibly gullible.
Comstock Images/Comstock/Getty ImagesEven though that would be a remarkably effective way to stop 419 scammers.
Blauvelt may have lacked in expensive mansions and the common sense to stay the hell away from minors, but his pure, stupid tenacity was world championship material: Until the end, he tried to convince the police that he had inherited the place from his dead grandfather. You know, despite having broken in and being unable to provide any paperwork, and with the real owner of the place having called the cops in the first place.
#4. The Man Who Stole a Plane to Show His Girlfriend He Can Fly
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There is a very specific type of person who aspires to be the Badass, yet always ends up as the Punchline. He's the guy who can't hike through a jungle without getting into a boxing match with a silverback gorilla, and then, once he wakes up, he immediately gets arrested for harassing wildlife. We're not explicitly saying that Michael Santos is one of these people, but, you know, there's a reason a man like that turns up in a Cracked article.
Laporte County Jail via WTHRNext to that goatee, abusing endangered animals doesn't seem like much of a crime.
For instance, in 2007, Santos drove his girlfriend to an airport to show her how to fly a plane. Things were already well on their way down the path of catastrophe: Not only was Santos driving drunk, but he didn't even have a driver's license (he had a lifetime ban from driving because of, yes, drunk driving). Still, Santos was certain that his inebriation wouldn't affect his plane-flying capability -- after all, he had none. Santos didn't own a plane and was, all things considered, pretty much the exact opposite of a qualified pilot.
Santos wasn't about to let these facts interfere with his plan to show his girlfriend how he could fly through the air like the player he clearly was, perhaps as a lead-in to an offhand suggestion re: the Mile High Club. So Santos broke into the first plane he saw and managed to start its engine. The happy couple drove the plane around for a while on the ground. Santos was just trying to figure out how to take off and heading down the taxiway when the left engine suddenly (and, considering what might have happened if they actually had managed to take off, thankfully) burst into flames.
Logan Mock-Bunting/Getty Images News/Getty Images"Uncontrolled fire gives you another 25 horsepower!"
Santos had enough sense to power down the engines before the whole plane exploded, and their romantic cruise in the sky took a different destination in the form of a nearby bean field, where the plane stuck. Presumably that marked the end of the date as well.
It took authorities several months to track down Santos, and in the end they only caught him because someone overheard him bragging about having stolen a plane once. Santos was charged with felony theft, criminal mischief, and being a habitual traffic offender, his grand total amounting to four years of prison.
Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images"Objection! The girl had awesome boobs!"
"Sustained."
Damages to the aircraft, by the way, were estimated at a cool $160,000. Don't drink and fly, kids!
#3. The Man Who Faked an Impossible War Hero Status to Impress His Wife
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To his wife, Roger Day was the bravest man who ever lived. Who could blame her? From the day they met, Day had enthralled her with thrilling tales of his war heroics across multiple fronts and many decades. Although he had witnessed immeasurable atrocities, his only lament in life was that he couldn't show his 17 (17!) medals to her, as they had sadly been stolen.
BananaStock/BananaStock/Getty Images"Once I got Bruce Willis' watch up there, I didn't have room for much else."
So Day's wife made it her mission to replace those medals. After compiling a list of the medals Day said he'd lost, she went online to find replacements for all of them.
Through her diligence, she finally managed to assemble Day's impressive collection. Finally, he could show the world what a hero he was! And indeed, come next Remembrance Day, Day strapped on his wad of medals and marched in the parade with his fellow veterans. That's when the problems started. He entered said parade looking like this:
SWNS via The Daily MailEighteen people were killed in storm surges from the resulting shift in gravity.
Holy shit! If you look closely, there's a man behind all those Christmas ornaments. And that man is a filthy liar. As you can guess, there is simply no way one man could have earned all of them unless he was Rambo: According to his chest display, Day had been recognized for acts of bravery in theaters ranging from the Gulf War to World War II, and he had served the top secret SAS forces with enough merit to receive a bunch of their badges. It took the public roughly 0.05 seconds to realize that this jingling apparition was a bullshitter of the highest order, and since wearing medals in order to deceive happens to be against the law, he was awesomely arrested straight from the parade line.
Day hilariously attempted to maintain his war hero story for a while, but a court soon forced him to admit that he'd made it all up in order to impress his wife. And although history doesn't tell us how things turned out for them, we're guessing Day's passive-aggressive claim that he only did it "because his wife needed a hero in her life" at least led to a few years of sleeping on the couch.
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