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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)

#181

Post by mrtksn »

_heimdall wrote: post #170
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…

I'm not so sure most people know what they're signing up for when opening a bank account. I also don't think banks particularly hide it, but I'd be surprised if the average person realizes that their checking and savings accounts are only IOUs or that money lent out for a mortgage likely didn't exist until they signed closing documents.

For all practical purposes for a customer who doesn't do more than putting money in, it's just a storage and they know how much of it is protected if something happens to the bank. From their point of view their money is there, even if the implementation details are much more complicated.

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

#182

Post by hn8305823 »

StayTrue wrote: post #175

Lots of confusion here about what such a meter actually looks like. See the start of this [0] document for a photo. It’s an older photo but I remember the same from Edmonton in the 1980s. No digital display, no thermal printer, etc. They were numerous — one meter for each parking spot. Later in the subject’s tenure they were swapped for digital display/timer meters with the same form factor (still no printer). https:…

In GTA Vice City one of the first ways you can make money outside of missions is to sneak over to the main island, run over parking meters downtown and collect the money. It doesn't take long to collect enough to buy the cheap shack residence downtown, which is conveniently near the police helipad.

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

#183

Post by margalabargala »

sbarre wrote: post #122
samirillian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Holy cow. 5% would be high. 30% is dizzying. You're saying that if I pick a random recently sold BC property, there's a one in three chance it's bought with cash?

That's not a money laundering problem, that's a money laundering infestation.

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

#184

Post by _heimdall »

mrtksn wrote: post #181
_heimdall wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure most people know what they're signing up for when opening a bank account. I also don't think banks particularly hide it, but I'd be surprised if the average person realizes that their checking and savings accounts are only IOUs or that money lent out for a mortgage likely didn't exist until they signed closing documents.

For all practical purposes for a customer who doesn't do more than putting money in, it's just a storage and they know how much of it is protected if something happens to the bank. From their point of view their money is there, even if the implementation details are much more complicated.

But the money literally isn't there, and the FDIC insurance that secures up to a limit is itself poorly funded and incapable of covering the failure of a moderately sized bank.

Saying the money appears to be there is very different from the reality of it, and in the context of whether customers consent to how the system works its also feels disingenuous IMO.

Can people spend the money as though it were there? Sure. Is the money they deposited there or are they aware that 90-100% of the money was immediately allocated to something else? Almost certainly no.

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

#185

Post by gadders »

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.

London? Pretty common in all banks for front office staff.

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

#186

Post by topkai22 »

_heimdall wrote: post #170
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…

I'm not so sure most people know what they're signing up for when opening a bank account. I also don't think banks particularly hide it, but I'd be surprised if the average person realizes that their checking and savings accounts are only IOUs or that money lent out for a mortgage likely didn't exist until they signed closing documents.

> …checking and savings accounts are only IOUs…

That are guaranteed by the US Government up to $250,000. While the average person may not know the details, the average person’s faith in the banking system is well founded. That’s why these “alt-banks”, which avoid FDIC or NCUA coverages, are so problematic.

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

#187

Post by mrtksn »

_heimdall wrote: post #184
mrtksn wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all practical purposes for a customer who doesn't do more than putting money in, it's just a storage and they know how much of it is protected if something happens to the bank. From their point of view their money is there, even if the implementation details are much more complicated.

But the money literally isn't there, and the FDIC insurance that secures up to a limit is itself poorly funded and incapable of covering the failure of a moderately sized bank. Saying the money appears to be there is very different from the reality of it, and in the context of whether customers consent to how the system works its also feels disingenuous IMO. Can people spend the money as though it were there? Sure. I…

Who cares, the customers aren't exposed to all that and that's why they don't know it. It's like saying that McDonald's doesn't have any hamburgers, it's all buns and meat and lettuce. Yeah, that's how it works.

Last year a few banks went tits up, all the deposits were paid.

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

#188

Post by pavel_lishin »

whycome wrote: post #154
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.

They did; the article even points out that there were two audits that showed the discrepancies:

> The failure to catch him, despite discrepancies between fares and cash raised in two audits, was put down to a belief that the errors were software glitches and, after his arrest, led to a significant amount of internal finger-pointing.

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

#189

Post by reese_john »

rileymat2 wrote: post #138
dkasper wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 interes…

> Yes, they create money, but deposits are a requirement to do it.

Deposits, although an important source of funding are not a requirement, capital is. There are capital requirements that make starting and running a bank a fairly expensive enterprise - you need to put up a lot of your own money (equity) for use.

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

#190

Post by sbarre »

margalabargala wrote: post #183
sbarre wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Holy cow. 5% would be high. 30% is dizzying. You're saying that if I pick a random recently sold BC property, there's a one in three chance it's bought with cash? That's not a money laundering problem, that's a money laundering infestation.

Again, not across all of BC, but in hot markets like parts of Vancouver and Victoria..

It sounds high but it seems to be normal enough?

I found this with some quick Googling:

https://www.thestreet.com/housing/a-surprising-number-of-hom...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2023/all...

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