Many years ago, I was having a discussion with a friend studying Criminology. He stated "All criminals are stupid", and then told some anecdotes to prove his point.

His anecdotes were amusing, but so stupid that I needed to point out that is original statement was not supported by his evidence. He had certainly proven that some criminals are particularily stupid, however he had not given any evidence that all criminals are stupid. A bit of a conversation later, he was even more adamant that all criminals are stupid, and started citing police statistics to prove his point.

I countered with the fact that by definition smart criminals would not appear in police statistics; in fact, government statistics are not an effective means of measuring the intelligence of criminals.

In fact, a truly brilliant criminal would not even appear to be a criminal at all.

We both went quiet at this point: he finally broke the silence with "No, all criminals are stupid"; I stayed quiet with visions of the behaviour of community leaders, teachers, charity groups, and even friends/family racing through my head.

Our paths diverged:
- He became a professor.
- I became an anarchist.

+Philip Wright
When you said "I'm fascinated by genius criminals", I started typing this up as a comment. I decided to post it seperately since it was so large.