Secrets of the City

Monique Dee McFarland, 34, a Minneapolis dominatrix, was charged with felony theft for robbing a 53-year-old blind man in a wheelchair a couple weeks ago.

The two originally met in a chat room and then took it to the real world, where McFarland pulled a knife, told him to take off his clothes, tied his hands to his bed using two neckties, and then stole his laptop, digital camera, lockbox, checkbook, keys, wallet, and cell phone.

According to City Pages, “She says it was all part of the game and he wanted to be tied up. We are guessing the stealing wasn’t part of his request.”

Local filmmakers Wendy Runge, of Polynation Pictures LLC, and Matthias Saunders, of Maximum Productions LLC, were accused Monday of unlawfully inflating values on applications for tax credits in Iowa totaling more than $10,000.

According to an affidavit filed by the attorney general’s office, Runge, Saunders and their companies were seeking tax credits for a science fiction film entitled “The Scientist.”

The filmmakers were awarded more than $1.8 million in tax credits, or about half of the cost of producing the film, according to invoices.

The filmmakers are being charged with first-degree theft, which carries a possible punishment of 10 years in prison.

Last year’s Mr. Basketball has and will have no season at all. After a dubious start, entailing theft, disorderly conduct, and immediate suspension, freshman forward Royce White is withdrawing from the University of Minnesota and leaving the team without ever even playing a game.

On Monday, he was charged with trespassing in connection to an alleged theft of a laptop computer from a university dorm.

So much promise down the drain.

Forty-three-year-old Victor Daniel Berrios, of New Prague, Minn., walked into an Eagan grocery store on Sunday, filled a bag with produce and lobster tail, and walked right out the door without paying. It’s like a dream come true — only without the store personnel noticing him and chasing him out of the store.

Berrios turned on them, pulled out a three-inch Smith and Wesson lock blade knife and said, “You want to do this?”

So they backed off a bit, continued to follow him from further away, and finally nabbed him at an elementary school hockey rink. As police arrested him, Berrios had but one things to say: “Wow, all this for a couple of lobster tails? C’mon, woman!”

He was charged with felony counts of second-degree assault and robbery.

(via PiPress)

A West St. Paul tobacco shop has been hit — literally — three times since mid-November, with an aggressive thief in two of the incidents using a vehicle to smash through the front entrance.

Industrial espionage? Sabotage? A new tact for home wine-making?

[via Strib via KSTP:] [University of Minnesota's Horticulture Research Center] spokesman Peter Moe says the thieves apparently knew what they wanted. He says someone stole samples from vines that are being to develop a new type of grape.

He says the university has been researching the grape for two years. He says if someone replants the vine, it could threaten the revenue stream the university would have seen if the grape turns out to be commercially successful.

The Horticulture Research Center is in Victoria, and is where the recent Honeycrisp, Sweet Sixteen, and new SweeTango apple hybrids were developed.