Florida Drug Suspect Tells Cops His Name Is 'Tyler Durden'

A man arrested by police in Florida attempted to give a fake but opted for ‘Tyler Durden’ – clearly he forgot the first rule of Fake Name Club, which is to try and make a little bit believable. 

The 44-year-old was pulled over in Dunedin on Sunday night (30 April), during the traffic stop police found a 9mm handgun, ammo and ‘a trafficking amount’ of drugs inside his car. 

After discovering the firearm and drugs – which included heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and Xanax – Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office officers asked the man for his name. 

But rather than make things easy for himself, he told the cops his name was Tyler Durden – the fictional character played by Brad Pitt in 1999 flick Fight Club, an arrest report states. 

The officers seemingly took him at his word and ran the name through their database, but were ‘unable to locate a subject by that name’. Not surprising given that Tyler Durden doesn’t even really exist in the fictional world Fight Club is set in. 

Unable to identify the bloke, cops used a fingerprint scanner and discovered that ‘Tyler Durden’ was actually Todd Michael Burns, who has previous convictions in relation to drugs as well as grand theft and disorderly conduct, though there didn’t seem to be anything related to an illegal, underground fight club in his history, so at least there’s that. 

After Burns’s identity was confirmed by cops, he ‘admitted to giving a false name due to not knowing why he was being arrested’. 

Tyler Durden… sorry, I mean, Burns is now facing a number of felony drug and weapons charges as well as a misdemeanour for giving a fake name to law enforcement, the Smoking Gun reports.

Last year, a man in Michigan was arrested and gave officers a false name, only to soon learn that the name he gave belonged to someone who was already wanted on an outstanding warrant. Awkward. 

According to Michigan State Police, in March last year, Cadillac Post troopers arrested a man after spotting a vehicle parked on the shoulder of M-55 in Clam Lake Township with its lights turned off.

Inside was a 30-year-old man from Lawton, who was sitting in the passenger's seat alongside a woman in the driver's seat.

When troopers turned on their emergency lights, the man 'ducked down in the passenger seat'.

They spoke to the man, who gave officers a false name that, unfortunately for him, just so happened to be one that had a warrant out for arrest.

After finding drugs and cash on the bloke in the car, he was arrested and lodged in Wexford County Jail, where fingerprinting revealed his true identity.

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