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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)

#131

Post by yurishimo »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #101
rgmerk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t sound like he did. Laundromats would have been ideal for this kind of, well, money laundering. In a pre-digital era, who’s going to check that the number of cycles on the washing machines line up exactly with the takings?

An auditor or private investigator, but granted, there's a lot of room for tax evasion - there's a reason a lot of businesses and contractors will gladly take cash, tax evasion being one, most digital transaction costing them money being another. It's fairly common in my country (NL) to see signs saying "please pay in cash" and "€0.25 surcharge if paying with debit card for amounts below €20"

Around where do you live? Anecdotally, I don't see much of any of that in Eindhoven or the surrounding villages.

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

#132

Post by toyg »

xpe wrote: post #68
refurb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that too. $38k in 1981 in Edmonton was firmly middle class. Plenty of homes cost less than $100k. Rent was in the $100-300 per month range for a nice 2 bedroom. Dude just got greedy. If he had skimmed $600 per week instead of $3000, he would have doubled his take home pay and likely never would have been caught. It would have amounted to almost $100k every 3 years which is a tidy sum back then.

> Dude just got greedy. It seems to me that once a person builds an illegal habit, it demonstrates they: (a) probably have a higher risk tolerance than most people and/or an inaccurate understanding of the empirical risk level and/or (b) they have, perhaps only temporarily, found a self-interestedly-rational aspect of law/society to exploit. Once one's behavior crosses into that realm, "dude just got greedy" seems to…

> How many optimally greedy criminals are there?

I don't know, how big is Wall Street nowadays? /s

More seriously: it's likely that there are indeed a lot of "optimally greedy" criminals - it's just that we don't label them criminals, because they don't get caught. I guess the actual numbers are somewhat dependent on your trust in the ability of law enforcement.

> perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers?

Perhaps it was just the '80s, when banks didn't really want to ask any questions.

> the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear.

I agree there. Note that criminals do tend to understand this, typically regarding the results of conviction. It's the reason capital punishment is not really a deterrent: because once you pass the threshold (which is often with a single act), punishment does not grow prportionally, so they might as well do it over and over.

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

#133

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Scoundreller wrote: post #53
walthamstow wrote: post #23

It's amazing how far you can get in crime by not driving a flash car and just generally keeping a low profile

Only necessary if you keep your job. If you don’t, there are plenty of places you can live very nicely without having to explain where all that money came from. Your neighbours will be too afraid you’ll wonder the same question about them.

And the only one you may need to explain yourself to is taxes; I have (had) colleagues working at the tax office, they're working on machine learning algorithms to detect suspicious activity on bank accounts (because the tax office has full access to everyone's transaction history, of course). They focused on suspicious repeat transactions, but I'm sure they will at some point focus on a suspicious absence of transactions, e.g. no grocery purchases.

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

#134

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Bluecobra wrote: post #128
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.

Shortly before they became obsolete, payphones over here switched to pre-paid cards, which made them less convenient / ad-hoc to use and may have contributed to their decline (mobile phones being the obvious one of course).

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by Cthulhu_ »

toyg wrote: post #120
Waterluvian wrote: post #116

“ Sooner or later, the temptation to spend became too much and maybe thinking he would never get caught in 1992, Kara decided to trade up from his modest $136,000 home to something much more fitting of a vending-machine millionaire.” Well… what’s the point of stealing money if you can’t ever spend it?

As anyone who watched The Wire knows, thanks to Stringer Bell's pitch to Marlo Stanfield, "they turn your things against you, that's how they get you" . Conspicuous consumption is bound to trigger alarms. The smart wealth makes itself as invisible as possible, and typically plans generational succession instead. If you really want to enjoy your riches, you better build all sorts of deniability layers first, or do it…

Or moved abroad where they wouldn't ask questions; the challenge then is moving a lot of money across the border without customs asking questions. This is where cryptocurrencies have probably come in very handy, although, buying cryptocurrency using coins is probably difficult, lol.

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

#138

Post by rileymat2 »

dkasper wrote: post #129
nicgrev103 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The part that is missing is that when you take that money to buy the thing intended with the loan the bank has to give you that money unless it is going to a customer of the same bank; impacting the fractional reserve requirement.

As a thought experiment, if you started a bank from 0, how do you pay out the first loan?

Yes, they create money, but deposits are a requirement to do it. (Unless you are doing some interest rate arbitrage by getting a loan from another source)

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

#139

Post by breischl »

codeulike wrote: post #119

Stealing 2 million, one coin at a time, over 13 years, mostly at night, by waggling a magnetised car antenna through a small slot for hours and hours, is actually hard work. Its like the opposite of The Shawshank Redemption.

Digging a tunnel through a rock wall with a tiny hammer over years, as in The Shawshank Redemption, seems very similar.

Both sound like a lot of work though.

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

#140

Post by red-iron-pine »

Scoundreller wrote: post #54
paulluuk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, that's about $117k (CAD) per year in 2023. (80k euro, 88k usd)

While interest rates were sky high then, internets say a detached bungalow in Edmonton cost $82k then, but about the same 10 years later.

they sure ain't 82k now. $482k for somewhere near the LRT might be a good start
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