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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)

#151

Post by whycome »

kvdveer wrote: post #64
mschuster91 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discrepancies in accounting are the norm, not the exception. No large company will ever have perfectly balanced books for a multitude of reasons - too many different IT systems that sometimes but not always have the same data, humans in the loop that forget or fat-finger entries, inventory loss/theft/damage, you name it.

Having your books off by a few percent is indeed quite common. However, missing 20% on your primary source of income is not the norm. If a company would report that nowadays, it would trigger a money laundering investigation.

Was the cash box here the primary source of income??

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

#152

Post by whycome »

macshome wrote: post #127

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?

Looks like all current Canadian coins can be picked up -- $1, $2 .25, .05, .10. (couldn't test pennies as Canada hasn't had them for a while).

I suspect US quarters would have the same makeup

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

#153

Post by red-iron-pine »

codetrotter wrote: post #10
londons_explore wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're employed as a machine repairman, I assume you visit every machine pretty frequently...

Also, FTA: > maintain and fix the 68 ticket machines of Edmonton’s LRT So it’s not like the total number of machines is that crazy either.

it's not a big system. Edmonton is a town built by oil money and they love their cars and trucks; it's Snow Texas.

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

#154

Post by whycome »

badcppdev wrote: post #2

That is absolutely disgraceful on the part of the accountants and programmers who should have been reconciling the cash vs sales. Over 13 years!

Disgraceful? What if they didn't have adequate ridership numbers to use to reconcile? A lot of bus cash fares don't keep a rider number. And it was 1981.

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

#155

Post by npteljes »

hoseja wrote: post #75
npteljes wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Yes, this is correct. The bank does it in a somewhat government controlled fashion, with checks and balances, which the world has been fighting for a millennia, if not more. And the guy inside does it with stolen money, for personal gain. Consent, for one, is a difference between the two actions, if we…

[flagged]

Among the most powerful, there's always anarchy. But even this is beside the point.

The point is that in OP's scenario, there's a bank doing investments, and a person doing investments. The bank had their funds in their usual way, and the person outright stole the funds. That makes a big difference, when talking morality, but not because of the investments, but because of the source of the funds for the investments.

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

#156

Post by whycome »

jaggs wrote: post #67
xnorswap wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

About to be the subject of a UK TV series this month.

Well that has the potential to be incredibly depressing. It will be super interesting to see how they portray the developers and if they call out fujitsu

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

#157

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

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 you just move someplace where there's no extradiction agreement with the country where you committed the crime. Look at Ronnie Biggs, one of the "Great Train Robbery" culprits from the UK who then lived for years in Brazil.

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

#158

Post by planede »

rgmerk wrote: post #84
evan_ wrote: post #21

Passing it off as proceeds from a vending machine business was smart, I wonder if he actually had a fleet of vending machines to make that plausible. Of course you’d need to be able to show receipts for cost of goods sold… money laundering is hard!

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?

Correlating with water and electricity bills could raise suspicion, but yeah, it's probably harder.

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

#159

Post by 6figurelenins »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #118
ilammy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, not really. Do people consent when politicians reallocate their taxes to bail out too "large to fail" institutions? Given the protests, I think not. What if you didn't vote for the candidate that voted in the bailout? What if you specifically didn't vote (or voted for an opponent of) that policymaker. That's actually anti -consent

The concept of voting includes the possibility that a plurality of voters reject your preference. You consent to this outcome by participating.

When half[1] the population refuses to participate (perhaps they're tired of being lied to, or the candidates are slime, or there are too many selectively-interpreted, arbitrarily-enforced "laws" to count[2], or the idea one person should represent 617,000 is absurd, or they just don't like bossing their neighbors around)...

Maybe the government doesn't have consent.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/19/knight-non... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code#Number_and_...

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

#160

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

whycome wrote: post #152
macshome wrote: post #127

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?

Looks like all current Canadian coins can be picked up -- $1, $2 .25, .05, .10. (couldn't test pennies as Canada hasn't had them for a while). I suspect US quarters would have the same makeup

US quarters cannot be picked up by magnets.
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