Max Friedener was serving time for a fraud conviction when he hid in a large box in the mailroom. When the box was placed in the mail truck, Friedener was on his way to freedom. He escaped from the truck as it drove away.

No one was wiser to what had happened until the mail truck arrived at the sorting depot. Only then was the hole in the box discovered.

Last month a similar escape was staged at prison in Austria. A convict who was serving 7 years for robbery wrapped himself up in a parcel and had other convicts carry him onto a transporation truck. He too escaped from the truck once it was clear of the prison.

The truck driver had just noticed the hole in the truck's tarpaulin when he received a phone call from the prison asking him if he had noticed anything unusual.

"We are kind of missing a prisoner," they told him.

The warden of the Austrian prison remarked that, "This sort of thing was not supposed to happen. Guards need to count prisoners at the end of working hours. We are investigating the case."

Both escaped prisoners are still on the loose.

It should not be this easy for a prisoner to escape. What happened to the watchful eye of prison guards?