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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)

#301

Post by NelsonMinar »

ac29 wrote: post #286
NelsonMinar wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, the part of the story where a single coin is valuable enough to bother with is very interesting to me. Our failure over years to introduce a working dollar coin (much less a toonie) is frustrating.

This was 40 years ago and he was stealing hundreds of coins a day. Also, I'm sure you realize, but the US has had dollar coins since at least 1971. The public never really had much interest in using them and with cash use declining, I wouldnt expect that to change.

You're right, I do realize!

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

#302

Post by Scoundreller »

alexbock wrote: post #280
Scoundreller wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought all coin mechanisms use magnets to differentiate coins, no? A coin drops at a known speed and the right coin will get pulled by the right amount by a magnet or get rejected.

It sounds like you're thinking of separating coins using eddy current braking [1]. This works even for non-magnetic coins because the effect is a function of the metal's electrical conductivity. If you have a silver coin or a small piece of copper pipe and a large, strong neodymium magnet, then you can easily observe this effect at home by putting the metal sample on a table and quickly waving the magnet past it as c…

Thanks for explaining. Wondered how non-ferro coins were handled.

TD Bank in Canada had coin counting machines for customers for a while. I dumped a few hundred $ in and was very happy when it kicked back some silver coins to me.

How nice of them!

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

#303

Post by ikekkdcjkfke »

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.

When money becomes a target, it fails to be a good money?

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

#304

Post by abdullahkhalids »

codeulike wrote: post #4

Kara was effectively stealing 20% of LRT fares over the 13-year period; one in five coins that were fed into the machines by the paying public ended up in his shaving bag This can't be right. How can one person steal 20% of the coins going through all the machines? Have they miscalculated the amount he took versus one year rather than 13 years?

I would imagine this is coin payments only. Most people probably used transit passes. So coin payments would be a small fraction of the overall revenue.

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

#305

Post by BryanBigs »

mrtksn wrote: post #121
belter wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "mandatory 2 weeks time off at a time in many jurisdictions" statement might not be precise enough or technically accurate description of the legal status. It's more like "everywhere I know it's mandatory to take 2 weeks time off" and the mandate can come from the institution itself, their partners or a regulatory body recommendation or requirement.

I was in investment management for a us bank - here the requirement is all officers must take 5 consecutive days off to ensure at least one weekend is covered. Considering I never touched money, it was one of those fun perks of working for a bank, like taking 2 hours of elder abuse classes for regulations in a state I didn't live nor work in, and being tested yearly all about money laundering laws and regulations.

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

#306

Post by avidiax »

JackFr wrote: post #230
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.

https://archive.ph/CtpVe

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

#307

Post by c1sc0 »

FrankoDelMar wrote: post #294
foooorsyth wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Boston in the '90s and early 2000s, an out of order parking meter meant you could park for free. There was a sensor in the coin slot to detect jams which would in turn put the meter out of order. If you ripped off the flip up lid from a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup and inserted it into and removed it from the coin slot, the meter would go out of order. It was almost as if that's what the Dunkin engineers designed it f…

My father used to do this too in Boston, but instead by jamming the slot with some kind of paper past the point of removing it. Extra points for using the orange colored envelope you got with your last parking ticket. Definitely was not a good lesson for a similarly aged me.

I’d argue that it is a very good lesson for that age …

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

#308

Post by avidiax »

rsynnott wrote: post #270
xpe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Bernie Madoff might be close to an example; his scheme kept going for an _amazingly_ long time, and he made some effort at times to reduce inflow to keep it somewhat under control. There was probably a world in which it only came out after he died; as it was he was kind of unlucky with the timing. Of course, there might be plenty of optimally greedy criminals out there…

The best part of Bernie Madoff's grift, in my opinion, is that it follows the notion that "you can't cheat an honest man".

No one had any legitimate idea for how Bernie could beat the market by such an amount and so consistently, and yet they still invested. They must have thought that he was insider trading or suspected that it was a Ponzi. Roughly half his investors made money by cashing out, which is not something you'd usually do if you thought the fund was legitimate.

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

#309

Post by blep_ »

4hg4ufxhy wrote: post #123
paulluuk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the coin is perfectly circular, is does in fact have only 2 sides (as a perfect circle has no sides). If the coin is not perfectly circular, but is (at some microscopic level) full of edges, it could have a near infinite amount of sides.

Can there be more sides than atoms on the surface?

Trivially yes: how many sides does one atom have?

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

#310

Post by _heimdall »

mrtksn wrote: post #187
_heimdall wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my opinion a more apt analogy would be McDonalds selling low quality food that includes ingredients known to very likely ve bad for your health without ever making that clear. Sure a customer could technically dig into research and health studies but that's not really the point here.

Is it consent if you aren't made aware or given reasonable access to information that the average person could be expected to understand?

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