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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)

#221

Post by jaggs »

whycome wrote: post #156
jaggs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I really hope so. The authorities haven't even compensated most of the victims yet, still stalling. Hopefully the series will shame them into doing the right thing. It was disgusting what they did to these poor people, mostly just small mom and pop businesses who couldn't fight back.

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

#222

Post by ChiperSoft »

mrtksn wrote: post #69
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,…

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…

There have been 538 US bank failures since 2008.

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

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

#223

Post by ben30 »

Reminds me of a lesser-known story from the Falklands War. On the HMS Sheffield, there was a civilian laundry worker. When the ship was struck and sank, he tragically drowned, reportedly burdened by a large number of £1 coins he carried from laundry payments.

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

#226

Post by beambot »

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.

1 in 3 U.S. Homebuyers Are Paying All Cash, the Highest Share in Nearly a Decade

Just over one-third (34.1%) of U.S. home purchases in September were made in cash, up from 29.5% a year earlier and the highest share in nearly a decade. That’s according to a new report from Redfin (redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231108812516/en/1-i...

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

#227

Post by Scoundreller »

ilamont wrote: post #217

Skimming 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://w…

That’s nothing, in Canada we had a guy steal half point (200g) gold nuggets… internally… from the Mint. Only got caught when he deposited lots of big cheques from a gold coin shop at his bank and they learned he worked at the Mint.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/royal-canadian-mint-emp...

In 2015, this fellow was making $55k/yr, contrast to the guy in the article making $31k in 1981.

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

#229

Post by Scoundreller »

hinkley wrote: post #201
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.

There was that couple in New England where the husband figured out there was a lottery ticket that was nearly guaranteed to return a slight profit if nobody won the previous couple of weeks. Several articles were written about them, I think I saw an ad for a movie even, but it took both of them working very long days to pull this off, including standing in convenience stores for hours at a time pushing buttons. I thi…

That was a calculated bet though, where the expected value was known to the positive, but you’d need to buy as much as possible to guarantee your outcome each time that situation happened.

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

#230

Post by JackFr »

ilamont wrote: post #217

Skimming 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://w…

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/08/nyregion/tunnel-vision-ki...

Token sucking - described by police as the most disgusting non-violent crime committed on the NYC subway.

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