A man who ran a travel agents in the Granada Province held up a bank in Málaga so that he could be sent to prison.

Prior to carrying out his plan he sent a text message to his wife via WhatsApp saying, “I’m going to do something stupid so that they send me to prison. He then closed the doors to his office and went to the bus station. He got on the first bus that was leaving; it was heading for Málaga.

Then get off the bus upon arriving and looked for the nearest bank, which was a branch of Caja Rural del Sur on Calle Cuarteles .

“This is a hold up! I have a gun in my bag,” he told the surprised bank manager, but the only thing he had in the bag was an old potato peeler. He wasn’t a professional bank robber, after all; just a desperate, 52-year-old man driven to ruin by the present economic crisis.

His second instruction to the bank manager was not the tried-and-trusted “Hand over all the cash you have,” but, “Call the police; I want to be in a prison cell by tonight.”

The bank manager recounts how the ‘bank robber’ told him that he didn’t want his money and that it would probably be a good idea if he ordered the doors closed so that no customers walked in. The man also told him, apologetically, that he might have to rough him up to make sure that he was arrested. The manager responded by tell him to get any idea out of his head of touching him or the female cashier, although he was certain that the man had no real intention of causing anybody any harm.

Just under 15 minutes later the police arrived and the robber told the manager to let them in. The grappled him and held him down over a desk, taking the bag from him with the small knife inside.

The man told the police that he had physically attacked the staff, but both members denied that this had happened; he hadn’t laid a finger on them nor had he stolen anything. (the world upside down?).

As he had no criminal record, he spent one night in the police cells before going before a magistrate who released him without bail.

Editorial comment: honest citizens driven to seeking jail whilst crooked politicians and unscrupulous bank CEO’s will never see the inside of one.