A while back we told you about a funny story from Texas where a guy tried to steal some Dragon Ball Z DVDs from his local Wal-Mart. This new story comes to us from Japan, where a 21-year-old man and two teenage cohorts totally one-uped the American hick by stealing an entire gashapon machine. From Anime News Network:

The Mamoyama police station in the central Japanese prefecture of Shiga has arrested a man and two teenagers on October 22 on suspicion of stealing Dragon Ball anime figures — and the vending machine holding the figures. According to the police investigation, Tatsuya Chiyo, a 21-year-old concrete construction worker from Shiga’s Rittō City, and two 16-year-old high school boys from the same city took a vending machine from outside a used bookstore in Mamoyama on July 7. Inside the machine were about 20 figures that sold for 200 yen (about US$2) each. The vending machine itself is worth about 14,000 yen (US$140).

Even though the bookstore had more than ten vending machines stacked side-by-side, the suspects reportedly took just the machine with the Dragon Ball figures “because they sell for high prices.” The police say that they identified Chiyo from the fingerprints that were found on the machine after it had been abandoned in a nearby park.

Gotta love it.