Mint Employee Steals Error Coins

Probably got caught when the $2 atm fee's started to rack up.

If I have 2.4 mil in ill-gotten gains, what should I do with it?

-stuff it in my mattress

-slowly pay off all my debts and live "off the financial grid" in a few years
-retire to the carribean or a non-extraditable country.
-give it to charity
-quietly buy coins or other items which would act as a store of value and which I could sell piecemeal later
-live it up in various cash transactions (booze, women, etc)
-put it in a bank, effectively advertising "here I am, IRS come get me!"



hmmmmmmmmmmmm........

Wow...deposting the cash into a bank account was beyond stupid.

As a medically retired Detective,I can tell you that the Security force always has the best chance of stealing. Who checks them? And who checks the people that check the Security people? And who checks them? As you can see it has to stop somewhere. At some point you just have to trust that your Police ( they called him a Mint Cop)have to be honest. That assumption leads to the greatest opportunity for theft.

What has me thinking is the fact that you would have thought the Mint would have records of disposal and would check those figures against the reclaimed metals weight. Which leads to think he would have had to substitute non error coins for the error coins he took.

The only way I can see it happening is if the smelting facility was in a seperate building than the main mint facility. The window of opportunity would be in the transportation segment.

As for the bank? That almost sounds like he was trying to get caught. Guilt,maybe? I have seen these things before. Or he thought he was so smart that he deliberately put the money in the POLICE and Fire Mans Credit Union as a way of boosting his ego.

I once interviewed a man on his death bed. He committed a robbery in the 40s. One Robbery. He took out a loan and bought a house and made his payments with the stolen money.He bought a car the same way most people do, he took out a loan. He had a couple of credit cards. And made all his loan and credit payments with his stolen money. He filed tax returns every year and declared income as a General Contractor, and paid his taxes with the stolen money. He put ten percent of his "income" in the bank every month. He invested that money in conservative funds and CDs ( when CDs were making good money).

He never worked a day in his life after the robbery. No one ever questioned him. He was a nice guy with a nice house and never caused any problems. His own wife never knew. He would leave every day to go to work. Drive to his storage unit where he would change clothes, grab the golf clubs and go play. He said he was an avid golfer and had played at all the courses up and down the coast. When he wasn't Golfing he went to the movies or would shop for Antiques.

He told me the ironic thing was that he made enough money buying and selling Antiques that he could have legitimately gone into the Antique business. But that he had to hide his profits because there was no way to explain to the wife where he found the time to do all the buying and selling.

He did, by the way, open and Antique shop when he "retired" from Contracting.

He had all the evidence to prove his story. He had kept it all those years. The Statute of Limitations had run out long before. We were able to close the case.

I don't condone or admire the theft. I do admire the planning, thought process, and pure self discipline. That and the fact that no one was injured in the original robbery.

So the rejected coins are NOT melted in house? There ya go...

Thanks for sharing your story JM. Those who get away with a crime are even more interesting than those who get caught.

DETAILS...!!
2.4 million IN coin errors....not 2.4 million dollar coins.......... and obviously this would be over a long period of time, in the years.

That's probably ridiculous.

Wow, my kids were right, it really is easy to make stuff up.