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Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

nofreelunch.co.uk

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Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#121

Post by mrtksn »

belter wrote: post #80
mrtksn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually pretty common criminal activity in banking, where an employee will take money from accounts of clients and "gamble" it on high-return short term investments. Obviously I won't be naming Banks here but what usually happens is: 1) If they succeed in their investment they put the money back and walk out rich. Their venture can be detected during an audit some time later but if there's no money missing th…

I worked in finance and I am not aware of jurisdictions that mandate 2 weeks time off. Can you mention one? I am aware of some recommendations but I have worked up to board level, and never see this being more than an excuse to not miss the next golf tournament.

The "mandatory 2 weeks time off at a time in many jurisdictions" statement might not be precise enough or technically accurate description of the legal status. It's more like "everywhere I know it's mandatory to take 2 weeks time off" and the mandate can come from the institution itself, their partners or a regulatory body recommendation or requirement.

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#122

Post by sbarre »

samirillian wrote: post #77
Freak_NL wrote: post #9

A 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.

Yeah, I mean, real estate in BC (where he bought one of his properties) is notoriously corrupt, and lucrative. Most real estate bought in BC is paid in cash, often by some dizzying maze of LLCs or whatever the Canadian equivalent is. Essentially money laundering and investment rolled into one.

> Most real estate bought in BC is paid in cash, often by some dizzying maze of LLCs or whatever the Canadian equivalent is.

This is provably false. It's not "most" real estate, it has only recently approached 30% or so, and only in hot markets like Vancouver and Victoria.

There's a money laundering problem in Canadian real estate for sure, but let's try to be reasonably accurate in our statements, shall we?

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#123

Post by 4hg4ufxhy »

paulluuk wrote: post #49
mkl95 wrote: post #45

> Remember, every coin has two sides Unless his coins were microscopically thin, three sides would be more accurate

If the coin is perfectly circular, is does in fact have only 2 sides (as a perfect circle has no sides). If the coin is not perfectly circular, but is (at some microscopic level) full of edges, it could have a near infinite amount of sides.

Can there be more sides than atoms on the surface?

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#124

Post by nicgrev103 »

ilammy wrote: post #99
nicgrev103 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how many people know this is what the bank is doing with their deposits, making consent difficult.

Usually people don't care what the bank does because they consent to the government making them whole in case the bank fails to return the deposit.

You could use the same argument for the scammer employee who gambles with your money to make a personal gain. You implicitly consent because you consent to the government prosecuting injustice and returning your misappropriated funds.

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#125

Post by gruez »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #79
mrtksn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but banks do it within a legal framework that moderates the risk(at least in theory) and people know what they are signing into and what are their guarantees. You don't see too many banks collapsing, don't you? When it happens, its a big deal like with the SVB earlier last year. It's also what Sam Bankman-Fried and others did in exchanges that acted as unregulated banks. The system is not perfect and there are ma…

>You don't see too many banks collapsing, don't you? When it happens, its a big deal like with the SVB earlier last year. "Moderating risk" = depending on the US federal government bail you out? There really is no need for the charade of banks now that electronic databases are very solid technology. Their whole role in transmitting and keeping an account of money is surely reproducible by the federal government at ve…

>There really is no need for the charade of banks now that electronic databases are very solid technology. Their whole role in transmitting and keeping an account of money is surely reproducible by the federal government at very little cost (maybe even lower cost due to not needing FDIC and all that infrastructure) without having to pay a middleman.

Banks' job isn't just keeping money safe and doing transactions. It includes maturity transformation as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maturity_transformation

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#127

Post by macshome »

As an American, the part of the story that is very interesting to me is that Canadian coins have enough ferrous content to be picked up by a magnet. Wouldn’t the ability for coins to become magnetized cause all sorts of issues for the internal workings of vending machines and other coin slot using mechanisms?

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#128

Post by Bluecobra »

refurb wrote: post #39

In the words of Ace Rothstein in the movie Casino. ” You can spot these assholes by watching the way they bet. Like this guy. He's bettin' lavender chips at five hundred each with only one little problem. He's always guessed right. If he wasn't so fuckin' greedy, he'd have been tougher to spot. But in the end, they're all greedy.”

This story reminded me of the payphone bandit, James Clark, who stole about $500k picking the payphone locks during the 1980s. Had he kept a lower profile, payphones eventually became obsolete and he might have gotten away with it.

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#129

Post by dkasper »

nicgrev103 wrote: post #66
mrtksn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually pretty common criminal activity in banking, where an employee will take money from accounts of clients and "gamble" it on high-return short term investments. Obviously I won't be naming Banks here but what usually happens is: 1) If they succeed in their investment they put the money back and walk out rich. Their venture can be detected during an audit some time later but if there's no money missing th…

Isn't this literally what banks do? Take peoples deposits paying a minimal interest rate and then invest that money to earn a return higher than the interest rate they pay the customer (they actually will also borrow more money on the back of your deposit). So, when it's the bank doing it it's ok but a bank employee doing it independently for personal gain it's an issue. The book deal aspect was interesting also. So,…

Not quite because it’s almost backward with banks. Yes they take your deposits, but to the bank a deposit is a liability not an asset. Banks can lend out much more than their deposits (fractional reserve) but they technically don’t even need deposits at all to create a loan, because a loan is credit (asset) and a liability to the borrower. This means banks in the modern sense can literally create money, so they don’t need your deposits. You can imagine if no one defaults banks can balance their cash flows without any deposits at all, but in practice there is risk so deposits are more like a form of reserves more or less, and potentially an expensive one if interest rates are high. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022416/why-b...

Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)

#130

Post by forinti »

toogan wrote: post #37
forinti wrote: post #13

A 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.

Is not paying tax on income from theft actually tax fraud? I mean, the theft itself is obviously unlawful. But perhaps you wouldn't be taxed on theft proceeds anyway, so no tax laws are broken in that case.

Even if it weren't, I'd suppose that the CRA would want to know how he came about the money in order to attest if it was really exempt.
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