Too bad it doesn’t say how he actually got found out. I imagine he could have gotten away with it if he had gradually reduced his theft of coins over 2-3 years, then quit the job and moved somewhere else. I’m pretty sure there’s tons of schemes like this that aren’t ever found out.
Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
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Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#12[flagged]
Given the Post Office / Horizon scandal, I'd actually be reassured the default assumption was the software was wrong.
Further reading at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal , the TLDR is the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history because people insisted the software was right.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#13A quick Google didn't return any books on this, unfortunately.
What stood out for me was that the Canadian tax authorities didn't get to him. Maybe he payed tax on his earnings; the article doesn't clarify.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#14Too bad it doesn’t say how he actually got found out. I imagine he could have gotten away with it if he had gradually reduced his theft of coins over 2-3 years, then quit the job and moved somewhere else. I’m pretty sure there’s tons of schemes like this that aren’t ever found out.
> Too bad it doesn’t say how he actually got found out.
Hm? It does:
> In 1993, with the red flags mounting up, the city authorities hired private investigators to observe Kara, which finally caught him in the act.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#15Kara was effectively stealing 20% of LRT fares over the 13-year period; one in five coins that were fed into the machines by the paying public ended up in his shaving bag This can't be right. How can one person steal 20% of the coins going through all the machines? Have they miscalculated the amount he took versus one year rather than 13 years?
It would also mean that with him stealing $2.4M, their total proceeds over 13 years were $12M which is less than $1M a year to run their whole LRT.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#16His salary, in real terms, was pretty good by the way. Way more than I earned as a software dev for many years.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#17A curious thing here is that, if this article is correct, the man spent 16 months in prison, and had repaid the amount stolen by then. It seems reasonable to assume that if he had not invested his stolen money in real estate he would not have been able to repay his debt to society so cleanly. I wonder if in the end he didn't make a sizeable profit from all of this.
This got me confused. Says he "repaid the proceeds of his scam to cover the city’s insurers". Does that mean it was lower than the amount stolen and just the amount the city paid the insurance? So he paid the premium but not the total amount covered?
edits: another source says he settled with the insurance company which implies its less than the total amount.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#18I'm surprised Canadian coins are magnetic, though my two minute research says the loonie isn't? Apparently it was redesigned around 2000, maybe it switched then.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#19That is absolutely disgraceful on the part of the accountants and programmers who should have been reconciling the cash vs sales. Over 13 years!
Read up on the UK Post Office Horizon scandal if you want a really horrible example of this.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#20[flagged]
The 20% could easily be missed if it ended up looking like a ticket wasn't sold at all (ie. just 20% fewer tickets got sold). Many railways don't keep track of the paper that tickets are sold on, because the same paper is used for printing receipts, seat reservations, free/discounted tickets etc. Many railways also have a double digit percentage of fare evasion. Also, many railways operate partially/mostly on governm…
But surely they would have a counter of how many tickets were sold in a machine?