Craigslist is a great place to sell that beat-up sofa or (for the supervillains among us) recruit your next batch of henchmen. Now, thanks to a Monroe, WA man, "bank robbery decoys" has joined the list of creative uses of the grassroots classifieds service.

According to The Seattle Times, a Craigslist ad was placed last week, offering road construction work at $28.50 per hour in Monroe, WA, a city northeast of Seattle. About a dozen men replied to the ad, and all received instructions to show up outside a Bank of America wearing a yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask, and a blue shirt.

As the men gathered outside the bank within the proper attire, however, another man wearing the same getup used pepper spray on a guard transporting cash from an armored truck into the bank. The suspect grabbed the duffel bag, ran 100 yards to Wood Creek, and made his getaway (floataway?) on what police believe to be an inner tube. Seattle FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs told the Times that armored car robberies are "quite uncommon," and that she's never heard of an inner tube serving as a getaway vehicle.

Strange ads on Craigslist are anything but uncommon these days, though, and some of them have landed the company in hot water. In November 2006, and again in March 2008, Craigslist was hit by lawsuits for discriminatory ads that specified things like "no uglies" in postings for an apartment roommate. In April 2007, another ad told viewers to take whatever they want from a house. Turns out the ad was probably the result of a family feud, allegedly placed by the evicted sister of Laurie Raye, who actually owned the house. Raye never blamed Craigslist for what happened.

The lawsuits were eventually dismissed on the grounds that Craigslist is a service provider, not a publisher, and therefore not responsible for the content of the ads. Indeed, plenty more user-favorited ads in the Craigslist Best Of section could be walking various lines between legitimacy and legality. As in past cases, though, Craigslist will almost certainly be exempt from any liability in this bank robbery case. If anything, the suspect at least earns points for creativity and succeeding at what is possibly the slowest getaway ever.