[deleted]
[deleted]
Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
211–220 of 331 posts
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#212As 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?
We have tons of vending machines, and coin slots and I've never had or heard of such a problem? Completely anecdotal but still.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#213Stealing 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.
The direction of travel relative to jail is the opposite though.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#214[dead]
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#215That is absolutely disgraceful on the part of the accountants and programmers who should have been reconciling the cash vs sales. Over 13 years!
[deleted]
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#216Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#217Skimming from public transit is an old trick.
There was case like this in Boston about 15 years ago that came to light as they were switching away from tokens to Charlie Cards. It was an MBTA mechanic. IIRC he was caught because it looked strange that someone kept showing up with bags of tokens to exchange for cash at one of the stations.
Even with the new card system, someone figured out a scheme to steal:
https://www.universalhub.com/2011/mbta-revere-man-made-sold-...
And when I was a kid there was a big parking meter scandal in which most of the collectors were implicated after a resident saw two of them skimming. Loved this quote from the investigator:
''The meters in Boston are the oldest I've ever seen,'' Mr. Vitagliano said. ''In some cases, it is actually easier to take a quarter out of one of our meters than to put a quarter in. I mean that.''
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/08/us/boston-meter-collector...
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
US quarters cannot be picked up by magnets.
Interesting that they exist interchangeably in all vending machines, etc in Canada.
Canadian vending machines are happy to accept US quarters at par. Why pay for a more sensitive mechanism to prevent someone from giving you a more valuable coin. Although, probably not more valuable enough that it's worth filtering out from change boxes to deposit with a US based bank instead.
Otoh, there are coin mechanisms that can check for and reject quarter sized objects that are attracted to magnets; they might not be installed everywhere that takes US quarters, but if an operator starts getting a nuisance amount of CA quarters, they will be. See this doc [1] for a description of a pretty discerning mechanism (although it accepts both US and CA quarters, a slightly different design could reject CA quarters)
[1] http://segalandassociates.com/Documents/Coin-Mechanisms_Slug...
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#219> He removed the face plate from the ticket machines, which as a repairman would raise no suspicion, then rigged a car antenna with a magnetic tip, like a make-shift fishing rod. Coin-by-coin, Kara hooked his catch out of the ticketing machine cash box into a shaving bag, which acted as his keep net. I can't picture how his rig worked, the article would have benefitted by anything visual help :/
I can't picture how you stand there long enough to steal thousands of dollars per week without anybody noticing for 13 years.
Re: Salim Kara stole $2M in coins with a magnet and a car antenna (2022)
#220A 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.
[deleted]