Whether it's hookers on Craigslist or ticket scalpers on eBay, it's always a depressingly short time between the launch of some democratic Internet feature and the point at which people start exploiting it for nefarious means.

Google Earth has seen more than its fair share of imaginative and legally dubious misuses since it debuted a couple of years ago, from spotting naked people to busting pot farms. But one London construction worker deserves special credit for appropriating this most hi-tech of devices for a particularly Victorian scam: stealing the led off of church roofs.

Over a six-month period, 27-year-old Tom Berge apparently used the virtual mapping program to spot the valuable metal on the tops of over 30 churches, museums and schools across South London, before climbing the buildings, stripping the historic roofs and selling the bounty to scrap-metal dealers. Which makes him the most cutting-edge Dickensian scoundrel since that time we recruited a gang of child-pickpockets via Facebook.