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On the Schmuck of the Week beat, figuring out who's the schmuck turns out to be more of a challenge than it might seem at first blush.

The arrest of Fountain police officer Daniel Barkus on a stalking charge is a case in point. Based on the information that's surfaced thus far, it's difficult to tell if he did something wrong or if he's simply the victim of a big misunderstanding, albeit a high-profile one, due to his association with the reality TV series Prospectors and its sexy star, Amanda Adkins.

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We here at Schmuck of the Week HQ aren't criminals -- really! -- so it's hard to put ourselves in the mind of lawbreakers and miscreants. Yet it still makes sense to us for people stealing stuff from their workplace to make sure there are a lot of other suspects in case the thefts come to light.

Apparently, Autumn Guillot disagreed, since she swiped a six-figure sum from a credit union where she was one of only two fulltime employees. How'd the cops figure out it was her? Here's Guillot's schmucky story.

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Around here, folks tend to earn Schmuck of the Week glory for crimes they've already committed.

That makes Mike Vanderboegh special -- because the Alabama blogger and blowhard familiar to a certain segment of the populace from numerous appearances on Fox News earns this week's honors for an offense that hasn't yet taken place. Vanderboegh says he's coming to Colorado with the intention of defying the state's ban on certain gun magazines -- a brand of protest he's exercised before, with shattering results.

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In many situations, Longmont bookkeeper Mary Sanders's try-try again attitude would be a real positive. Problem is, the thing at which she allegedly didn't succeed the first time around was stealing a shitload of money from a couple of Burger Kings. And we're guessing the folks at the company that later hired her aren't too wowed by her stick-to-it philosophy, since she's accused of ripping off even more from them. As a bonus, the incident took place while she was on bail for the first crime. When it comes to Schmuck of the Week status, we have a winner!

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Ever heard someone described as being so greedy that she would steal from her own mother? Well, that particular shoe fits Judith Eakins, 53, as if it was made for her, since she did steal from her own mother, a 92 year old with dementia who died last month.

But that's not the only reason Eakins is a stellar candidate for schmuckification. She's also been charged with embezzling $150,000 from Golden High School. That's one busy schmuck! Details on both incidents below.

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In some ways, it's appropriate that Richard Howard Craft, a disgraced former Greeley pastor, was sentenced to federal prison on April Fools' Day.

Then again, "fool" is too mild a term for Craft given what he's admitted to doing. And frankly, "schmuck" doesn't really cut it, either, although it'll do in a fix.

You see, Craft has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography, a crime for which he'll spend the next decade behind bars. And that's not all.

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Law enforcers deal with criminals all the time, and even though plenty of them deserve to be called names, the cops tend to resist the urge to do so.

It's a tribute to Todd Griffin's schmuckiness, then, that Oakland, Michigan, County Sheriff Michael Bouchard has publicly dubbed the man busted in Colorado this week a "lowlife" and a "scumbag." But that's about what you'd expect regarding a guy whose nickname is the Funeral Bandit.

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After the Aurora theater shooting last July, plenty of people across the country were nervous during their next trip to the movies -- especially if the flick they were seeing was The Dark Knight Rises, which was unspooling as a gunman killed twelve people and injured seventy others.

Still, Ohio's Scott Smith took things to schmucky extremes by heading to a Batman screening with a bag filled with weapons -- and that's not all.

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Broncos safety Quinton Carter was hurt most of last season, and the contract he signed as a rookie in 2011 is pretty modest by NFL standards -- $2.495 million over four years. That's barely enough to buy a new Escalade each Christmas!

Still, it's tough for us to believe Carter is so hard up for cash that he needed to cheat a Las Vegas casino over $15. And if he didn't need the dough, he's an incredible schmuck -- because he's been charged with a crime that could net him up to six years in prison.

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As we know, plenty of people go to jail because of drugs. Sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly, but frequently.

But only a chosen few face time behind bars because they try to bring narcotics into jail. Like, for instance, Schmuck of the Week nominees Sarah Wolfe and Ronald Boyken, who are accused of conspiring with Guy Acosta in just such a scheme.

Acosta won't have far to go if he's convicted, since he's already an inmate.

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