He had been such a successful burglar, he could afford to have himself cloned.
Although this was extremely expensive, having a double made was considered to be a really good move at the time, as this would help enormously when it came to having an alibi. Although his clone looked remarkably like him, naturally, it had no previous experience in burglary. As a result, it was used solely for proving that he was somewhere other than the scene of the crime at the time the robbery was committed. He usually kept the clone under the bed and it was practically maintenance free.
When the time came, the clone would be sent out to some chosen location where he could be seen and remembered when the police went out looking for witnesses.
As a result of this new mode of operation his crimes brought in a lot more money. So much money, that he planned to leave his modest apartment and move into a mansion with extensive grounds that would increase his level of privacy. By way of a small celebration to commemorate his much improved future outlook, he decided to sit down with the drone and explain the upcoming move. It was during this unusual activity of bringing the clone out from under the bed and having him sit chatting to the man who had commissioned him, that there came a knock at the door.
It transpired that there had been trouble in his apartment complex that he knew nothing about. The knock came from a policeman who was looking for any possible witnesses to what had been a particularly bad case of graffiti damage to the front of the building the night before.
Thinking that the knock was probably the old lady from two doors along wanting to borrow more sugar, he got up and opened the door. Seeing the policeman, he kept his cool and listened to what the enquirer had to say. Looking over the man’s shoulder, the officer made a mental note of what he saw and was soon back at the station enthusiastically telling the detectives what he had discovered.
As a result of this quick response on the part of the policeman, only a few minutes passed before a squad car returned and took both the burglar and his accomplice in for questioning. The interrogation that followed was a most complex affair with both the man and the clone lying, a lot. Despite the fact that the police were not completely sure which one of them was the actual criminal, they did manage to lay charges concerning the most recent burglaries.
As it turned out, it was sheer dumb luck on the part of the police that the actual criminal was the one that ended up serving time.