Her Parents Said She Was Dead. Detectives Followed Her Poodle

A German woman embezzled $1.2 million from her employer, hid out on the Spanish island of Mallorca, and told her parents to say she was dead, authorities say. And she might have gotten away for it, if it wasn't for her giant poodle. The 47-year-old woman was tracked down to a villa on the island after she missed a court appearance in November and her parents claimed she'd died in a car accident in March last year, the BBC reports. The parents had a death certificate, but the solar power firm the woman worked for doubted their story and hired private investigators, who noticed that the woman appeared with a poodle in numerous photos on social media.

Large poodles—"giant" ones are standard poodles taller than 15 inches at the shoulder—are very rare on Mallorca, and investigators spent a lot of time observing dog parks on the island, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports. They eventually spotted a man walking a poodle matching the description and followed a man walking it to an address in the southwest of the island. Police say that after they were notified that the woman was still alive and still on Mallorca, they arrested her in her car—and found the poodle in the trunk. (More Spain stories.)