’67 felonies but only 6 years?!’: Criminal genius high school student outsmarted the FBI with a spree of house burglaries

Have you ever heard the tale of the Barefoot Bandit?

If not, read on, and know that there are multi-million dollar blockbuster movies that won’t take you on even a fraction of the roller coaster ride that this does.

TikTok‘s @xeviuniverse lays out the details in just under six minutes to decidedly entertaining effect. We’re first introduced to the protagonist of this story; Colton A. Harris-Moore, a then-high school student often targeted by bullies for being poor, and whose home life is none too pleasant on account of his alcoholic mother. A classmate named Harley stands up for Colton, and the two bond over their similar situations. But the thing is, Harley has nice clothes, and when Colton asks about that, Harley tells him that he routinely steals, which prompts Colton to begin doing the same.

One day, Colton is caught on camera by the FBI, which leads them to promptly break into Colton’s house and demand his wrists for cuffing. But Colton isn’t home; he’s in the forest.

The FBI surrounds the forest after locating loads upon loads of Colton’s stolen valuables. Around this time, Colton was hiding out in vacation homes owned by rich people, but he inadvertently alerted the authorities of his presence when he left the lights on in one of the houses outside of vacation season. They seize him, and he winds up in a corrections house. No sooner did he land there did Colton break out of the corrections house and decide to up his game by several orders of magnitude.

Clothes and valuables turned into Mercedes car thefts and countless home break-ins, which turned into stealing planes (which Colton learned how to pilot on the fly), which eventually turned into stealing police cars and weaponry. Homeland security gets called, and as an extra layer of defense, the government notifies all plane owners to lock their planes so that Colton can’t get away.

But somehow, Colton happens upon an irresponsible plane owner and steals that plane, intent on landing in Cuba but eventually winding up in the Bahamas. The FBI is notified and surround the island, but since it’s party weekend in the Bahamas, the chase continues with many distractions.

Colton then steals a speedboat, and the Bahamian police get involved. The chase ends when Colton beaches the boat and ultimately surrenders. He was charged with 67 felonies and was facing 30 years in prison, but his lawyer got it down to six and a half years, firmly establishing him as the most underpaid lawyer in all of human history. Colton has since done his time and is living a much quieter life now.

And according to IMDb, there is a documentary film about this saga called Fly Colt Fly; you all know what to do.