By Nic White
Daily Mail Australia
September 22, 2018
A young man who complained he couldn't get a job because he had 'DEVAST8' tattooed across his face in prison is back in court charged with assault.
Mark Cropp made international headlines last year when he begged for a job after the prominent tattoo across his lower face made employers turn away.
The 21-year-old said his brother did the regrettable tattoo while they were drunk on alcohol brewed behind bars in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Cropp was serving a two-year jail sentence for aggravated robbery after he pulled a knife on a tourist in a fake drug deal.
Now the young father has more legal trouble on his hands after being charged with assaulting a woman and making threats to kill.
Court records showed he would stand trial before a judge alone in November, according to the New Zealand Herald.
Cropp's Facebook plea for a job went viral and got him a position at scaffolding company PR Contracting, earning $22 to support his girlfriend Taneia Ruki and their child.
This appeared to be so successful he was in August filmed shooting cash into the crowd at an Auckland nightclub.
He in December began working as a traffic controller in Hamilton and was spotted wearing hi-vis jacket and a hard hat while on the job.
Before his final desperate plea on Facebook the teenager said people 'laughed in (his) face' when he had asked for work.
Cropp originally wanted to raise enough money to get the tattoo removed but stopped the treatment he was offered for free after the first session.
He last year revealed Devast8 was his nickname, but not for reasons he was proud of, and it appeared had returned to his life.
'You know there was a long time there where I would devastate everything I touched,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'I would end up devastating everyone I met or got close to.
'They would be disappointed with something I had done or said - I was always hearing 'that's devastating'.'
The tattoo was drawn with a homemade gun which used a needle made from the spring of a pen and powered by a cassette player.
Plastic knives and forks are burnt to a black plastic powder and mixed with toothpaste and water to create the ink.
'Once it was started, I thought, I can't go back on it now. I wish I had stopped while the outline was there to be quite honest,' he said.
'Before I knew it I had this on my face... It was swollen like a bloody pumpkin.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: About half the time after they are released from prison, you have to take the ‘ex’ out of ex-con, often because those prison tattoos are real job killers.
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