The female students stole Zellers BBQ chips, but the U.S. certainly has no shortage of stupid criminals

A stupid criminal story that took place on Vancouver Island about a month ago is now making the rounds on U.S. websites and social media.

You may remember the story of a couple drunk university students who stole Zellers brand barbeque-flavoured chips out of a woman's garage in Saanich, B.C.

The female students were drinking and heading to the University of Victoria when they passed an open garage and noticed the chips inside. According to CTV, the owner was awoken by her growling Chihuahua, heard the predators and called the police.

One theory why they may have been after that kind of chip is because Zellers is closing for good in October and these chips are particularly good.

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"I haven't tried these for myself, but my understanding is that particular brand of barbeque is quite tasty," said Sgt. Dean Jantzen of the Saanich Police as he tried to keep a straight face. "Apparently there had been some elicit chip tasting."

Jantzen couldn't keep his laughter suppressed any longer and after one question laughed saying, "These are first time chip offenders."

The students were charged with breaking and entering, but the charges were later dropped after they wrote apology letters to the victim.

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Even though it took a while for the Onion-style story to get to the U.S. media, they are jumping all over it.

"Canadian crime news is everything you want it to be," writes Samir Mezrahi on BuzzFeed. "I can't make this stuff up."

"Cops in Canada brave BBQ chip bandits," reads the headline for the andPOP article. The first sentence states "Crimes in Canada are really getting out of hand these days."

It has also been featured on the "Ridiculist" segment of the show Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN.

While Americans may think we only have crime stories like this because we have a small fraction of the number of shooting deaths, the country with no lack of stupid criminals is actually the U.S.

Here are a few of our favourite crimes that have happened in the previous weeks:

On Friday, a 50-year-old New Jersey woman was arrested after reporting to police that a marijuana dealer took her money, but didn't give her the pot.

A few weeks ago, a would-be-criminal was trying to break into a Rent-A-Center in Massachusetts, but got his head stuck in the garage door and waited like that for nine hours until the first employee showed up the next morning.

Over the weekend, a man in California set his house on fire when trying to clear spider webs using a propane blowtorch.

Finally, late last week, a Pennsylvania burglary suspect broke into a Subway restaurant and stole several bags of snacks. Officers followed the trail of chip bags to find the suspect.